National has promised that a re-elected government would end screen and individual-device use in early childhood centres and place tight limits on screens through the first three years of primary school, in an education policy released on the campaign trail on Sunday.
The package, which the party calls Set Up for Success, is built around school readiness rather than classroom technology alone. Alongside the screen restrictions, National says it would introduce a School Start Check at early childhood centres before children move to primary school, set clearer developmental milestones through the early childhood years and report a child’s progress against them to parents, and require the writing component of the twice-yearly primary school assessments to be done on paper rather than a device.
National’s education spokesperson Erica Stanford, who holds the education portfolio in the current Government, said New Zealand was not alone in reconsidering how much time young children spend learning through a screen, and that the international direction of travel showed digital did not automatically mean better.
“Young children are spending increasingly longer on screens, at the same time as the evidence tells us we should be cautious about excessive use,” Stanford said, in comments reported by the Otago Daily Times.
“For younger children, we want to place greater emphasis on books, handwriting, conversation, hands-on activities and direct interaction with teachers and other children.”
Stanford said technology still had a place in education, but that it should enhance learning rather than become the default way children learn. She also pointed to handwriting, arguing the physical act of forming letters helps children retain what they are taught.
“There is also growing evidence about the importance of handwriting and learning by hand. Forming letters helps children learn and retain information. When children are first learning to read and write, that matters,” she told RNZ.
The sharpest part of National’s argument is not about screens at all but about what teachers say they are seeing when five-year-olds walk through the gate. Stanford said new entrant teachers were reporting an increasing number of children starting school without basic self-care skills, including toilet training and eating and dressing independently.
“Children are arriving at school having never held a pencil or scissors, without the oral skills they need, and many cannot identify letters in their own name,” she said.
That is the gap the School Start Check is meant to catch. Under the policy, children would be assessed against developmental milestones while still in early childhood education, and those who needed extra help would be referred to the Early Intervention Service before they started school. Stanford was careful to head off the obvious worry that a check becomes a gate.
“This is about setting expectations, not a pass/fail test and will never stop a child starting school,” she said, according to 1News.
The announcement continues a direction National has taken through this parliamentary term. The school cellphone ban took effect from term two of 2024, requiring every state school to have a policy keeping phones away during the school day. In August this year the Government introduced the Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill, which would stop under-16s holding accounts on certain platforms and require operators to take reasonable steps to check a user’s age. That bill’s passage is far from assured, with both of National’s coalition partners, ACT and New Zealand First, having signalled they do not support it.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins, a former education minister, argued the policy aims at the wrong target. He said the evidence on lifting early childhood outcomes points somewhere else entirely.
“All of the evidence will tell you if you want to improve outcomes in early childhood education you focus on getting quality teachers in front of those kids,” Hipkins said.
It is a familiar line of attack and a genuine difference of emphasis. Labour has spent the term pressing on teacher pay, staffing ratios and the number of qualified teachers in centres, and treats those as the things that actually move the dial. National’s answer is that what children do with their hands and their attention in those rooms matters too, and that a centre can have excellent staff and still lean too heavily on tablets.
The Green Party was not dismissive. Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the party would look at what National was proposing, and framed the issue in terms of how the devices themselves are built.
“These devices are designed to addict us to them, so, yes, we are interested in exploring the details,” Swarbrick said.
Outside Parliament, Kelly Seaburg of Advocates for Early Learning Excellence welcomed the package, saying clearer milestones would help teachers track how children are progressing and identify the ones who need more support earlier than happens now.
Practical questions remain unanswered. National has not said whether the early childhood restriction would arrive through licensing criteria, the curriculum or regulation, how a centre would be expected to handle a device used by a teacher for assessment or documentation rather than by a child, or what “tightly limit” means in practice for a Year 2 classroom that currently runs reading and maths programmes on Chromebooks. Nor has the party costed the School Start Check or said who would carry it out, which matters in a sector already reporting staffing pressure.
Voters get their say on 7 November. If you want to work out where the parties actually sit on this and everything else, our voting tool lets you compare the policies side by side.
What do you think? Should screens be out of early childhood centres altogether, or is this the wrong fight? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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