Early education in New Zealand, or anywhere around the world for that matter, wasn’t always the norm. Take a trip back in your imagination, and envision what it was like to grow up a couple of hundred years ago in New Zealand. Your family may have been farmers, merchants, or perhaps a seafaring family. Maybe they worked on the shipyards in Wellington, building boats and ships to carry travelers across the ocean. Or, maybe they were sheep herders on the south island, living near the mountains.

Regardless of the occupation, or lack of, the idea of education for children of New Zealand was typically reserved for families who were wealthy. Most regular labouring families or those not extravagantly wealthy had their children working for them, even at a young age. Children were required to learn the skills of their fathers and mothers, to carry on the family farm or business, to succeed in the world. So what was the catalyst for requiring children to go to school, and for quality early education, or was it just a slow burn towards understanding the benefits of early education?

Education Act of 1877

Potentially one of the most important pieces of law to come in place for children’s education was the Education Act of 1877. This allowed for education to become not only important, but required as well. Public elementary education was now free for children to attend up until the age of 15, and even more important, it was actually compulsory for children to attend until the age of 13, although not strictly enforced.

This forced families to look at education seriously, and made it easier for poorer families to be able to send their child. While access to these schools was still limited for quite some time, especially for children located in rural areas, it was an excellent start.

Kindergartens established

In the 1880’s, New Zealand had already started to establish kindergartens. Many of them were originally  opened on a fee basis, which again, restricted the students to ones coming from wealthy families. However, as the 1880’s dawned, many kindergartens were opened through charities and funded on donations.

Part of the reason for charitable kindergartens was a way to help the slum kids to stay out of trouble and save them from an inevitable future of crime and lack of education. No matter what the reasoning was, it started a model that persisted until the present.

Societal changes

As the 20th century rolled in, society expectations of women and children were slowly shifting and morphing into something new. The roles of women became more fluid, and were less cemented in the role of the housewife. Many women were going out and finding jobs, or getting themselves an education as well. As more women decided to go out and educate themselves and hold down a full time job, there naturally needed to be a place for their children while they were out.

Once again, the differences between wealthy and poor were obvious, with wealthy families having the support they needed from nannies, but the poor unable to afford the education, and the price to have someone watch the children. Regardless, as more children had nowhere to go while their primary caretaker was at work, more and more early education centres opened as a way to help support them.

Beyond education, even the simple need for women to go off and do what they wanted, such as shopping or getting their hair done, was also a reason for centres to open. Women would often drop off their children at these facilities to have them watched while they ran their errands.

State interest in ECE

It wasn’t until about the mid 20th century when the state of New Zealand started to take an interest in the quality of early education centres. While the government of New Zealand started to fund early childhood education in the early 1900’s, the support wasn’t always there.

One huge shift in government interest was during and after the World Wars. Because of the lack of men available to work in roles traditionally held by men, women began taking up the open positions. Training for all kinds of roles became normalised for women to attend, and they slowly infiltrated the world that had been male dominated for centuries.

Because of this, the government was forced to start supporting child care, and the world started shifting their view to an increased acceptance of pre school education. In 1948, the New Zealand government officially began to fund teacher training. Even more importantly, this time period saw the emergence of the playcentre movement, which saw the need for providing education centres for women who didn’t have the support of their husbands.

Towards the 1970’s, in the height of the women’s rights era, children’s rights went hand in hand with the need for change. Part of this movement was seeing the need for social development in children, and making the compulsory part of early education be more enforced than it was before.

Child care regulations in New Zealand really took off with the Education Act of 1989. This enforced the compulsory requirement for children to not only attend school, but also work towards achievement. It also created rights for persons with disabilities and how special education was going to look for this group.

Today, we probably can’t even imagine a world without our neighborhood day care centre. Beyond that, we certainly can’t imagine a world where a woman couldn’t easily get an education, or go off and find a job. In fact, the shift towards men staying home with the children rather than a woman has become quite normal. Because of societal and governmental changes, despite them often being quite slow, children have been able to grow up in a world where safety, education and development are paramount, which is the happiest ending to the history of early education in New Zealand as you could ask for!