The Ministry of Education is planning a series of rule changes that will make it easier to crack down on poor-quality early childhood centres.

Ministerial documents say the overhaul is needed in part because of a rising number of complaints about centres and a growing number of challenges when the ministry tried to act.

They also warned the pandemic could cause financial difficulties for some services, "potentially leading to decisions that do not support quality outcomes for children".

The documents say the first round of changes will target problems that potentially put children's health and safety at risk.

They included allowing the ministry to issue directions to early learning services without first initiating a formal review of their licence, and allowing it to shut down those that had repeatedly been on provisional licences.

The documents say there is currently no restriction on the number of times an early learning service could be placed on a provisional licence.

"This means services can cycle on and off provisional licences for regulatory breaches, even repeated breaches of the same regulation, as long as they meet the licence conditions within the required timeframes," the document says.

"This type of 'cycling' demonstrates that a service is unable to sustain compliance with the regulations and could be putting the health and safety of children at risk. It is of particular concern when a service is frequently on a provisional licence for the same type of breaches and unable to embed practices that ensure continued compliance."

The chief executive of early childhood research and advocacy organisation, Child Forum, Sarah Alexander, says the proposed changes were small, but important.

"The ministry should be able to cancel the licence of an early childhood service based on its past history. That would be a good thing if it reduces the number of services that cut corners and that put children's safety at risk," she says.

She says some centres on provisional licences had the ability to improve, but others did not and the ministry should consider the competence of the people running a service when making its decisions.

She says low-quality is a lot more common than official figures indicated.

"There are probably many more services breaching minimum standards because they know they can get away with it than are on the official record," she says.

The head of the Teacher Advocacy Group, a support group for early childhood teachers, Susan Bate, says the ministry should hurry up and change the rules, particularly around provisional licences.

"The thing that we really need to look at is the ability of the ministry to cancel licences for centres that have been endlessly on provisional licence," she says.

"I don't think that should even be up for discussion, I think that should have been dealt with a long time ago - just do it," she says.

The documents say further changes will be made in 2022 and 2023.

-RNZ