Todd Painter runs Advance ECE, supporting early learning services across New Zealand with governance, management and administration (GMA).
He has been a centre owner for around 25 years and has spent the last 15 as a consultant, running in-centre sessions and pre-funding audit checks so services are ready when the Ministry of Education comes to audit. He isn’t a teacher by background; he came to the sector through the business of running a service well.
Here, he shares what he looks for when he walks into a service, why paper is still holding the sector back, and where he’s seen 1Place make a difference.
Can you tell us about your background and the work you do?
I’ve been a centre owner for about 25 years, and for the last 15 I’ve been a consultant around governance, management and administration. I do consulting and support services around administration and anything to do with funding rules, mostly through sessions in centre, working with services. A lot of that is what we call a pre-funding audit check, before the Ministry audit.
It’s an area I’ve kind of fallen into, the management side of ECE. I’m not a certified teacher myself, but I’ve always been interested in early childhood and providing that service to families.
When you walk into a service for the first time, what tells you how well it’s being run?
The first thing you’re looking at is the interaction between the teachers and the children, and seeing what’s going on there. If your staff are happy, then parents are happy and children are happy. It makes the culture of the whole service, and you can see that when you walk into a place.
How reliant is the sector still on paper?
What I find when I’m working with services is that our sector is still quite paper-based. Part of that comes from the Ministry of Education and its requirements for paper when it comes to funding rules, but it can be our other checks too. I feel our sector is a little slow in adapting: in simplifying things and moving to electronic.
Where have you seen 1Place make a difference for the services you work with?
Definitely through the dashboard: being able to check that the checks are actually happening, and being able to do that remotely. You can be sitting somewhere else and actually know that the morning checks have been completed.
Definitely the maintenance component too, so if there’s something that needs repair, a maintenance ticket can be made. And you get instant access to your registers. There’s a lot to like about 1Place.
What would you say to an owner who’s still weighing up going digital?
For our sector, there’s a bit going on. You have different applications for a lot of different things. What I like specifically about 1Place is that a lot of the pieces you need can actually be in the one place. You’re not having to have a different system for this, and get used to a different system for that.
If you had to sum up 1Place for educators and directors, what would you say?
What I really like about 1Place is that you can set up your checks the way you want them. Then, through the dashboard, you can keep an eye on them and make sure you’re meeting the requirements.
From the culture he sees on the floor to the paperwork behind a funding audit, Todd’s view after 25 years is simple: a service runs best when its checks are set up the way it works, and leaders can see they’re done without standing in the room. With ERO now licensing and regulating early learning services since 1 September 2026, that kind of visibility matters more than ever.
