Demand for early childhood education has risen dramatically in recent years and is set to increase with the current baby boom.
On top of that, all early childhood centres must now have 50% of their teachers fully qualified to remain licensed, rising to a fully qualified workforce by 2012.
The number of qualified teachers and those in training had grown significantly, but projections for next year showed the industry could be more than 1000 teachers short, an early childhood teacher supply summit in Auckland was told this week.
New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI) national secretary Paul Goulter said those shortages presented big challenges.
"What we don't want to see . . . is any move to water or dumb down those targets as that would compromise the quality of education we are striving for our youngest children."
Delegates at the summit discussed delaying the targets or not tying service funding to them to try to let teacher supply catch up with demand, but they were "clearly not the preferred options", he said.
Despite the nationwide concerns, Otago early childhood education providers believed they would not be affected.
Dunedin Community Childcare Association (DCCA) director Jo Ellis said there were "ebbs and flows" in the number of qualified ECE teachers looking for work but, on the whole, there were plenty available to meet demand.
"We recently put an ad in the paper for a qualified early childhood education teacher and we had a good number of highly qualified applicants.
It's heartening."
Mrs Ellis said DCCA was one of the largest providers of early childhood education in Otago and 90% of her staff were fully qualified.
"We've got the University of Otago College of Education and Te Tari Puna O Aotearoa on our back doorstep.
"It makes a big difference to our city that we have those training opportunities.
"We're not expecting any shortages of qualified teachers next year."
Mr Goulter said in some areas, hundreds of people wanted to enrol in early childhood teacher education, but not enough places were available because of funding.
The Government and universities needed to urgently review the funding caps on teacher education programmes, he said.
However, University of Otago College of Education dean Prof Helen May said the college had capacity to train more early childhood teachers but Otago and Southland's population was too small to fill the available positions.
Some applicants were not selected for the training course because they did not meet entry criteria, she said.
While the expansion in ECE provision had put some pressures on the sector, Prof May also believed Otago would be immune from the shortage of teachers next year.
"I don't believe there will be a crisis here in Otago."
