My name is Catherine Hawes and
I am in my third year of study at the Eastern Institute of Technology in
Taradale, Hawkes Bay. This blog is for one of my third year assignments and
comments and feedback will be gratefully received.
Teacher to child ratios in
early childhood centres play an important role in the quality of care available
for very young children throughout New Zealand. The ratios are bound by
government regulations and dictate how many teachers (adults) must be physically
on the floor working with the children at any given time. Currently the legal
requirement for how many adults must be engaged with children’s care and
learning for children under two, sessional or all day centres are one
adult for every five children. Children in over two care, sessional or
all-day centres are one adult for every six children (My ECE Website, 2015:
Parliamentary Council Office, 2013).
I chose this topic because I
feel that teachers are being put under more and more stress to cope with larger
numbers of infants, toddlers and young children in early childhood settings. I feel that
the 'care' becomes the primary function and outweighs the teaching opportunities.
I wonder if the ratios were lower would teachers have time to engage in
meaningful teaching and learning experiences with children.
I am interested in learning
more about how the teacher to child ratios impact, positively and/or
negatively, on teacher’s abilities to provide a good level of care, an
experience rich curriculum, and a low stress environment for infants and
toddlers.
Some parents are choosing to
or needing to go back to work after their babies born. Many of which do not
have the luxury of having families that can look after the children. Parents
are having to looking to institutional care to meet their needs. So the real political
issue is; should very young children be engaged in group care and education, is
it in the best interests of infants and toddlers or would very young children
benefit from being at home with a primary caregiver instead. If infants and toddlers must
be in institutional care then what optimizes the quality of care for them?
References
Parliamentary Council Office. (2013). Education Early Childhood Services Regulations 2008. Retrieved from
My ECE Website. (2015) Adult child ratios:
Minimum number of adults to children permitted. Retrieved from
http://www.myece.org.nz/centre-mininum-legal-requirements/129-minimum-adult-child-ratios
Good to see you have responded to the feedback. The scene is set for your research into this topic, I look forward to reading more and what you conclude.
ReplyDeleteCatherine, I agree with you when you say you think that we should have a lower child to teacher ratio.If this was the case then we would be able to spend more time engaging in meaningful coversations and giving children rich experiences. It isn't so easy to be able to do that when we have 5 or 10 children to care for per teacher.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the changes from children's learning and progress to the teacher's views on caring for less children if the ratios were to ever change. I wonder if the ratios will ever change? I hope that they will!
Thanks for your feed back Casey :)
DeleteThanks for your feed back Casey :)
DeleteWow Catherine! I am excited to keep reading this blog. You have chosen a really interesting topic here. I agree with you also, that we should have lower teacher to child ratios. Currently teachers are over worked, and stressed out. Centres that care for under two's become more of a factory run (nappies- bottle- bed and so on) rather than a place that provides rich learning opportunities.
ReplyDeleteI hope to see change in the future, as we only want the best for our children... so we need to provide it!
Thanks for your feedback Emma. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback Emma. :)
ReplyDelete