BestStart, is proud to be a Kiwi owned and operated Early Learning provider. We started back in 1996, when Chloe and Wayne Wright became involved in Early Childhood Education. Wayne and Chloe don’t do things by halves, and today we’re the largest provider of early learning centres in New Zealand, with over 260 centres and around 4,500 awesome staff!
We’re here for good. We’re a registered charity, 100% owned by the Wright Family Foundation, a Charitable Trust. The Foundation was set up by the Wright Family, because they wanted to support incredible community-focused organisations. That makes us a bit different and a bit special.
Some facts about us:
- We’re licensed to educate and care for over 15,000 full-time children daily.
- 18,000 families use BestStart services annually.
- We have over 260 centres nationwide located from Whangarei to Invercargill.
- Each centre is managed by a Centre Manager who is supported by a local Business Manager and a Professional Services Manager. This gives our centre teams ongoing quality training and support.
- Te Whāriki, the world-wide acclaimed national early childhood education curriculum, is used in all centres.
- We have over 4500 permanent teachers nationally. Over 90% of our permanent teaching staff are either fully qualified with a diploma or bachelor of teaching (ECE) or higher, or are in training. These figures are very high by national standards within the ECE sector.
- We provide a two-year Advice and Guidance Programme for all recently certified teachers, providing further mentoring and training. This gives strong support for teachers from provisional registration to full teacher registration with the NZ Teachers Council. We regularly spend around $4 million on teacher training per annum.