He Pānui Kōhungahunga
Update - 15 March 2022
He Pānui Kōhungahunga
Ngā mihi o te Rātū,
As promised, we will reduce the number of bulletins sent to you and have a weekly bulletin every Tuesday.
Thank you for your continued feedback, it’s valuable in helping us adapt our process to provide what you need.
I know you are all flat out responding to the challenges of staff and children’s absence, but as you are probably aware there are discussions underway around when and how vaccination mandates may be lifted. It is timely to think about planning for that as you will need to make your own health and safety policies.
Kia kaha,
Iona
Health and safety planning around vaccines
In the event the vaccination mandates in education are lifted, early learning services will be required to take the implications of this into account in decisions about their own health and safety settings:
Risk assessment and planning for COVID-19 – Te Mahau
This will help you to monitor and review health and safety policies around COVID-19, as you re-assess these in consultation with your staff and the wider schooling community.
Early and meaningful engagement with your staff will be of critical importance as you consider future policy settings.
Your Te Mahau advisors are available to provide advice and support regarding health and safety planning.
Temporary medical exemptions from booster requirements for those that have recently had COVID-19
We understand this is an area of concern for services at present and wanted to let you know that the Ministry of Health has now updated the process for those recently recovered from COVID-19 and seeking a temporary exemption to the booster requirement.
This includes the ability for a PCBU to submit a group application on behalf of multiple staff members:
Temporary medical exemptions – Ministry of Health
The Ministry of Health recommendation on the time frame to wait for a booster after infection with COVID-19 has also been clarified:
COVID-19 vaccine: Advice for different health circumstances – Ministry of Health
Temporary changes to funding subsidies
We have introduced some changes in the current funding period to support early learning services whose staffing levels and attendance has been impacted by Omicron.
We have also prepared a table showing the current funding settings we have in place to help early learning services.
Funding settings under the new traffic light system – Te Mahau
Recalculating March advance funding: Teacher-led centre-based services
For services that have dropped out of the 80-99% or 50-79% funding band for October 2021 to January 2022 washup, you will now receive the same funding band for the March advance as you were on for your November advance funding.
Any additional payments due to this recalculation will be made on 1 May 2022.
Teacher-led centre-based early learning services include kindergartens, education and care services and hospital-based services.
Protection of funding bands: Teacher-led centre-based services
Funding band protection has been guaranteed for the February to May 2022 washup. This means that for this period you will receive a wash up at the same band as your advance funding payment from the March 2022 funding round.
This protection applies to all funding bands, including those on 100%.
Teacher-led centre-based early learning services include kindergartens, education and care services and hospital-based services.
Protection of funding bands: Quality-rate services and Kōhanga reo
Funding band protection has been guaranteed for all quality-funded home-based education and care services, Kōhanga reo and playcentres.
Services that were on the quality rate on 1 February 2022 will remain on the quality rate for the February to May period.
From 1 June 2022 a new funding period will start, and the usual rules will apply.
Playgroup funding
We are introducing a Notional Roll scheme to help playgroups manage low attendance and sustainability while we are under the ‘Red’ and ‘Orange’ settings.
For the 1 January to 30 June 2022 funding period, if your roll has declined you can use the average number of children attending from the previous period.
You should contact your local Te Mahau office to discuss your playgroup funding.
COVID-19 website information has moved
As you know, Te Mahau is a part of Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga | The Ministry of Education and provides localised services and support.
The COVID-19 information and guidance previously housed on our main Ministry of Education website has been moved to the Te Mahau website.
Pages related to COVID-19 on our main site will be automatically redirected to the COVID-19 landing page on Te Mahau.
New look: Learning Management System
We are pleased to announce the new Learning Management System will be available from Wednesday 16 March.
Learning Management System – Ministry of Education
New features available include:
- access to learning content via a catalogue
- new classifications to enable filtering of learning content
- easier access – you can now use your Education Sector Logon (ESL) to login.
New compliance tool: Written direction
Following tranche one of the Early Learning Regulatory Review, new regulations have been put in place that introduce the ability for us to issue written directions to early learning services.
Early Learning Regulatory Review – Ministry of Education
The written direction allows us to focus on safe and healthy environments for all children all times, to:
- respond more swiftly
- require services to remedy any immediate health and safety risks promptly
- ensure the timeframe to remedy a risk will never exceed 10 working days.
- before we can issue a written direction, we will need to be satisfied the risk can be remedied safely while the service continues operating.
The written direction states the conditions a service must meet by the specified due dates. If a service does not meet the conditions of the written direction, its licence may be reclassified as provisional or suspended. Visit our website for more information about our compliance tools:
Change to Education Sector Login for early learning providers
In late March, we are making the electronic ‘delegated authoriser’ (DA) functionality for Education Sector Login (ESL) accounts available to early learning providers.
This means you will be able to stop using paper forms to manage new users’ accounts.
The electronic functionality will mean DAs:
- will no longer have to complete paper forms for users
- will be able to create and manage accounts in ESL in a timely manner
- will be able to give users access to applications such as Te Rito and Hapori Matatu.
Note, paper forms will still be required for access to ELI, ERS and the Secure Data Portal.
Existing DAs in ESL will be contacted to complete a training module to assist with this transition.
