Ministry for Regulation ECE regulatory sector review#

The Ministry for Regulation's sector review team began a review of early childhood education regulation in June 2024, working closely with the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office.

Scope of review#

The scope of the review was broad and examined the regulatory systems for education, health, safety, child protection, food safety, buildings, and workplaces as they applied to the early childhood sector.

The funding settings for early childhood education were not in scope of this review.

Engagement#

A range of engagement methods were used to gather information for the review, focusing on where rules and regulations weren’t working and finding ways to make things better.

The Ministry for Regulation received over 2,320 submissions and other forms of written feedback from parents, teachers, centre owners, child advocacy groups, unions, research bodies, and others connected to the sector.

Findings#

The Ministry for Regulation delivered its final report to the Minister for Regulation in December 2024. The report made 15 recommendations for improving ECE regulation.

Read more about the Ministry for Regulation findings in the final report.

Our publications – Ministry for Regulation

Work to progress the recommendations from the review#

The Government has endorsed the recommendations in the Ministry for Regulation’s report, which the Ministry of Education is progressing as part of its early learning regulatory work programme.

Amendment Bill to improve effectiveness of the ECE regulatory system#

The Government has introduced the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill which aims to improve the effectiveness of the ECE regulatory system for children and parents, and to reduce the regulatory burden for service providers.

This Bill implements some of the recommendations of the ECE Regulatory Review, including amending the Education and Training Act 2020 to:

• clarify the purpose, objectives, and guiding principles of regulating ECE services
• establish a new statutory role, the Director of Regulation, that will sit within the Ministry of Education and have responsibility for performing key regulatory functions in the ECE system, including licensing and certification
• clarify responsibilities relating to the prescribing of licensing criteria.

This Bill will create a Director of Regulation function within the Ministry of Education, with the intention that the role will later sit within the Education Review Office from next year.

The Government announced these decisions on 31 July 2025.

ECE reform gives the sector rights and the regulator purpose – Beehive.govt.nz

Consultation on the Education and Training (Early Childhood Education Reform) Amendment Bill closed on 1 September 2025.

It is expected that this Bill will come into force early next year.

Other changes to the ECE regulatory system in response to the regulatory review#

Create graduated enforcement tools

Once the Bill comes into force, regulations will be made to provide the Director of Regulation with a new set of graduated enforcement tools to enable a more proportionate approach to enforcing compliance.

This will implement one of the recommendations from the ECE Regulatory Review.

Work is underway, and we expect public consultation on the proposed regulatory changes to begin later this year, with the new tools expected to be in place early next year.

Amend the ECE licensing criteria

We are also progressing work to amend the ECE licensing criteria, with consultation on the proposed changes now closed. This work also responds to one of the recommendations from the ECE Regulatory Review.

We expect changes to the licensing criteria to be Gazetted by the end of September to provide further regulatory relief to the sector.

Advice provided by the Ministry of Education#

Below is a list of the advice we provided for the early learning regulatory review.