The early childhood education professional development contracts are being renegotiated from September to December 2002. New contracts will be effective from January 2003 to December 2004.

Government policy for licensed and chartered early childhood education services focuses on the quality of educational provision through two overarching policy statements. These are:

• Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa/ Early Childhood Curriculum;
• the Revised Statement of Early Childhood Desirable Objectives and Practices 1996 (the DOPs).

Early childhood education professional development programmes will also be guided by the directions outlined in the Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Education. The strategic plan can be viewed on the Ministry of Education website at www.minedu.govt.nz

Research shows that participation in quality early childhood education offers significant benefits for children, particularly for children from disadvantaged situations. Children and their families are more likely to thrive when they participate in educational services that are responsive to the cultural and social context of the family while maintaining quality teaching and learning processes that are supported by effective governance and management.

Specific funding has been provided for programmes that address the particular needs of schools and communities with significant numbers of Pasifika students.

Improving ESOL Teachers' Qualifications
Trained ESOL teachers working in mainstream classrooms or as specialists in primary and secondary schools provide critical interventions for those Pasifika non-English-speaking-background (NESB) students who may be struggling to develop literacy in English. The Teaching English in Schools to Speakers of Other Languages Tuition Fees scholarship helps up to 150 teachers a year to gain papers towards an appropriate qualification. Each teacher is funded for four papers, including course fees and $100 for books per annum, for two years.

Pasifika Home – School Partnerships
These professional development programmes help to raise the performance of students by strengthening schools' relationships with families. In primary schools, a group of teachers and parents (the school's lead team) are trained in four one-day workshops to co-lead six sessions for their school's Pasifika families.

These sessions are conducted in English and different home languages to endorse and build on what families are already doing for their children's learning and language. The sessions give parents opportunities to discuss how they can further help their children's literacy development.

2003 is the third year of a five-year professional development strategy to improve the teaching of mathematics in New Zealand schools.

The Early Numeracy Project – Years 1–3 (ENP) will continue, with places for a further 2000 teachers. Smaller schools in rural regions will be encouraged to consider a whole-school development. The Advanced Numeracy Project – Years 4–8 (ANP) will be available to about 1000 teachers from those schools that participated in ENP in 2002. Some 350 teachers will be invited to participate in the Intermediate Pilot Project – Years 7–8, where possible, with students who have participated in ANP in 2002. This project builds on ENP and ANP. A limited number of new places will be available in the Numeracy Exploratory Study – Years 9–10.

All the numeracy projects will continue to be co-ordinated by the School Support Services.

The pilot project Te Poutama Tau will continue in 2003 for teachers in Māori bilingual and immersion programmes at years 1 to 8.