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Government funding for early childhood education centres offering 20 free hours of childcare a week has been labelled disappointing by a Marlborough provider.
The new rates will be available from July and range from $10.60 an hour per child in centres where all the teachers are registered, to $4.09 for centres which offer more limited hours and where less than a quarter of the teachers are registered.
Developers Chris and Ginny Thornley head an investment group which is building a $2 million early learning centre on Colemans Rd in Springlands.
Mr Thornley said the funding would not be enough for centres to provide good quality early childhood education.
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Education Minister Steve Maharey said the 20 free hours policy would lower childcare costs for families and would benefit up to 92,000 children in the first year.
Marlborough Playcentre Association secretary Corina Naus said the six playcentres which belong to the parent-run association would not be eligible for the funding because they trained their own teachers.
"We are NZQA accredited but the Government doesn't recognise it. If we want to access the funding, we have to have what they call fully qualified teachers. It's hard to say what the effect will be."
Since the association is a parent-run cooperative, Ms Naus said it already offered considerably lower fees than most other early childhood centres.
"It's possible the free hours will tempt people to go elsewhere, but at this point we are thinking it probably won't have too much effect. Parents have input and can do adult education. We'll just have to wait and see."
- reprinted from the Marlborough Express