NZ child-care scam exposed
By Ian Powell
WELLINGTON — Child-care has not been immune to the drive from the mid-1980s towards deregulation and privatisation in New Zealand. Private child-care facilities are able to receive government funding providing they are recognised (ie licensed). However, recognition requirements have diminished as education deregulation has increased.
A recent case taken by the union representing education workers in early childhood education and primary schools highlights the dangers. The New Zealand Educational Institute had been investigating the treatment of workers at the Wallace House School Trust in Auckland and in the process uncovered highly unorthodox financial management.
The issue reared its head because of the repeated failure of the trust to pay its early child-care workers. It then unlawfully dismissed one worker because she had raised this matter with the union.
The dismissal was taken to the Employment Court, which ruled in that the dismissal was unjustified and the worker was to be reinstated. However, three days after the decision, the trust closed down the child-care centre and declared the workers redundant.
During the union's investigations, it was revealed that money provided by the Ministry of Education to the trust had been transferred to a profit-making bakery, which was run by the trust member responsible for both the employment of staff and the dismissal of the worker. In addition, the same trust member had been convicted of assaulting a child the previous year.
This case demonstrates how standards and scrutiny can easily fall, with alarming consequences, in the environment of privatisation and deregulation of education.