Professor Collette Tayler is the Chair of Early Childhood Education and Care in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. She is the co-author of an OECD report, with Dr John Bennett (OECD) reviewing Early Childhood Education and Care, and was an advisor to the Australian Government’s Department of Families and Community Services on national standards in child care. She writes here that it is time for a new idea and a new direction in Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC).
It is time for new thinking about early childhood education and care. If Australians value a ‘fair go’ and agree that such a value means giving children across the country optimum life chances and opportunities then it is time to let go of old thinking about ECEC.
The thinking that underpins the present mix of early childhood services makes ‘child care’ and ‘preschool’ separate entities.
It makes caring for young children a matter of private family responsibility and choice.
It makes caring the primary business of mothers and the secondary business of women who need little or no professional training to care.
It makes education at this level the business of early childhood teachers.
It makes public responsibility one of providing funds to help parents of young children alleviate the cost of caring because parents must plan their care and paid employment responsibilities for the nation to function.
There are plenty of reasons and a clear opportunity to create a new direction and style of early childhood education and care in Australia now.
Both the Federal and Victorian governments have moved to bring the auspice and administration of ‘child care’ and ‘early childhood education’ under a single department. This is in line with recommendations of the OECD, in the report Starting Strong II, by Bennett and Tayler.
Here, the case is made for public investment in ECEC, for a systematic and integrated approach to policy in this area, and for a strong and equal partnership with the public education system.
The report also argues for a universal approach to accessing quality early childhood education and care for all 3-6 year-old children. It encourages increasing the public provision for children under three years of age, in combination with paid parental leave for about the first year of a young child’s life. All of these directions are grounded both in empirical research of children’s development and learning and in the evidence of effective systemic provision for ECEC across the OECD group of countries.
The report also argues for participation – the participation of parents, extended family, local community, professional staff and governments to ensure that effective early childhood education and care is the outcome. This level of engagement and public responsibility is encouraged because the benefits of good ECEC flow not just to the child and family receiving the service but to society at large, across the child’s lifetime. The distribution of benefit, in fact, is mainly to society, justifying public investment.
So why does this demand new thinking rather than simply making a few adjustments to what is already in place for ECEC in Australia? Are real improvements in the education and care of young children at the forefront of decision-making now when the immediate problems in child care are being addressed?
February 2008 closed with suspended share trading in the global corporate ABC Learning, the consequence of debt-funded expansion into the United States. This development is yet to run its course, but at least 70,000 Australian care-places are potentially at risk. Some estimate that it is over 100,000 places.
Reassuring words appeared quickly from the institutional pillars of government, labour and business because ‘places’ for children are a protected entity, a core plank of labour market participation and the engagement of working families. Yet there is much more to the issue than this important support for the labour market and working families.
Children’s learning and development – their emotion, thinking, creative and artistic potential and their social capability is the matter at hand.
Most early childhood care and education outside the home happens in a play-based environment that, on the surface, may appear to be simple, unstructured and low-level. So long as children appear to be clean and safe then things might be seen to be satisfactory. This is the first point where re-thinking is demanded.
Converging international evidence from developmental science, early education, health and economics indicates that investment in quality early childhood education and care programs is socially, educationally and economically prudent. It is important for children’s life chances, for their long term health and wellbeing, for social cohesion and for the economy which, over time, is supplied with skilled adults.
The staff providing early childhood programs require particular skills to ensure supportive development and learning for young children.
Early childhood professionals need the capacity to diagnose subtle as well as obvious changes in the condition of children, the skill to liaise closely with parents and colleagues to support child development and advance learning, the design competence to prepare informal yet well-structured learning and development programs and the relational skills to build, for each child, a secure engaging environment.
How do ECEC staff in Australia rank in relation to these skills? Some 40 per cent of child care staff do not hold a minimum formal qualification. In child care settings 40 per cent of staff do not access any in-service development. An instrumental view of this work as ‘low-level’ and ‘low-skill’, combined with parent and community lack of capacity to directly observe the experiences and programs that young children encounter each day allows poor quality programs to persist.
Providing more cash subsidy to alleviate rising prices in child care does not ensure that staff skills are improved. Government faces on-going strategic problems if the strategies that have prevailed over the past decade are sustained. Keeping direct cash subsidies to parents in pace with the price of care is demonstrably failing as prices continue to rise while quality continues to be raised as a concern.
The combination of private-for-profit provision and indirect government funding of ECEC services (through subsidy to parents) makes subsidy, price, revenue and profit heavily interrelated. The current strategy adds value to child care businesses but does not give government direct input into the price and the quality of care.
Poor quality care for relatively high prices is a toxic combination for children and their parents, as well as for the taxpayer and for society in the long term. Starting Strong II argued for more attention to supply-side funding of early childhood services in order to ensure equity of access for young children and to allow control of quality.
The rise and rise of education in addressing ECEC programs does not mean a move toward a ‘schooling’ model. The four pillars of education articulated by Jacques DeLors – to know, to do, to live together and to be – from birth, set the ground for how people will respond to the compulsory school phase and to later life challenges.
Persistent viewing of ‘child care’ and ‘preschool’ as separate entities not related to education would ensure that the so called ‘Education Revolution’ is built on sand. It is time for a public and universal approach to accessing good quality ECEC as the entitlement of the children themselves. The promise of 15 hours per week of early childhood education for all four year-olds, implemented in a new integrated model of ECEC promises to advance opportunities for young children.
New thinking about investment in this area demands broader conceptualisation. Investment construed primarily as the supply of funds omits the core elements that justify paying public attention to this area. Investing in children involves commitment in time, thought and action as well as funding.
Investment is necessary both at individual and state level. Individual investment in infants, toddlers and young children is not only the business of mothering and motherhood.
Should Australia’s policy in ECEC remain rooted in a mindset of ‘mothers are best’, ‘mothers know best’ – a reflection of the social and moral compass shaped in the 50s – then it cannot serve contemporary Australian life.
Where children are recognised as citizens in their own right, as people deserving publicly provided professional care and education, the programs that are designed address learning, development, attitudes and dispositions. Such programs have sustained effect on personal well-being, academic achievement and future work and life participation.
In Australia today, nobody knows what differences in quality there are among the varied forms of early childhood education and care provision – for-profit long-day care centres, community-based centres, private and state preschools, home based care.
Nobody can clearly quantify the long-term benefits or detriments of these types of provision in Australia, using Australian evidence. Nobody can state what effect a less buoyant private care market and a more buoyant community-based approach has on child outcomes.
Longitudinal research designed to answer these questions in Australia is embryonic. We have strong leads from international studies but well-designed, focused Australian research is critical for future policy development.
Article reproduced with thanks to Voice, the University of Melbourne newspaper.
The thinking that underpins the present mix of early childhood services makes ‘child care’ and ‘preschool’ separate entities.
It makes caring for young children a matter of private family responsibility and choice.
It makes caring the primary business of mothers and the secondary business of women who need little or no professional training to care.
It makes education at this level the business of early childhood teachers.
It makes public responsibility one of providing funds to help parents of young children alleviate the cost of caring because parents must plan their care and paid employment responsibilities for the nation to function.
There are plenty of reasons and a clear opportunity to create a new direction and style of early childhood education and care in Australia now.
Both the Federal and Victorian governments have moved to bring the auspice and administration of ‘child care’ and ‘early childhood education’ under a single department. This is in line with recommendations of the OECD, in the report Starting Strong II, by Bennett and Tayler.
Here, the case is made for public investment in ECEC, for a systematic and integrated approach to policy in this area, and for a strong and equal partnership with the public education system.
The report also argues for a universal approach to accessing quality early childhood education and care for all 3-6 year-old children. It encourages increasing the public provision for children under three years of age, in combination with paid parental leave for about the first year of a young child’s life. All of these directions are grounded both in empirical research of children’s development and learning and in the evidence of effective systemic provision for ECEC across the OECD group of countries.
The report also argues for participation – the participation of parents, extended family, local community, professional staff and governments to ensure that effective early childhood education and care is the outcome. This level of engagement and public responsibility is encouraged because the benefits of good ECEC flow not just to the child and family receiving the service but to society at large, across the child’s lifetime. The distribution of benefit, in fact, is mainly to society, justifying public investment.
So why does this demand new thinking rather than simply making a few adjustments to what is already in place for ECEC in Australia? Are real improvements in the education and care of young children at the forefront of decision-making now when the immediate problems in child care are being addressed?
February 2008 closed with suspended share trading in the global corporate ABC Learning, the consequence of debt-funded expansion into the United States. This development is yet to run its course, but at least 70,000 Australian care-places are potentially at risk. Some estimate that it is over 100,000 places.
Reassuring words appeared quickly from the institutional pillars of government, labour and business because ‘places’ for children are a protected entity, a core plank of labour market participation and the engagement of working families. Yet there is much more to the issue than this important support for the labour market and working families.
Children’s learning and development – their emotion, thinking, creative and artistic potential and their social capability is the matter at hand.
Most early childhood care and education outside the home happens in a play-based environment that, on the surface, may appear to be simple, unstructured and low-level. So long as children appear to be clean and safe then things might be seen to be satisfactory. This is the first point where re-thinking is demanded.
Converging international evidence from developmental science, early education, health and economics indicates that investment in quality early childhood education and care programs is socially, educationally and economically prudent. It is important for children’s life chances, for their long term health and wellbeing, for social cohesion and for the economy which, over time, is supplied with skilled adults.
The staff providing early childhood programs require particular skills to ensure supportive development and learning for young children.
Early childhood professionals need the capacity to diagnose subtle as well as obvious changes in the condition of children, the skill to liaise closely with parents and colleagues to support child development and advance learning, the design competence to prepare informal yet well-structured learning and development programs and the relational skills to build, for each child, a secure engaging environment.
How do ECEC staff in Australia rank in relation to these skills? Some 40 per cent of child care staff do not hold a minimum formal qualification. In child care settings 40 per cent of staff do not access any in-service development. An instrumental view of this work as ‘low-level’ and ‘low-skill’, combined with parent and community lack of capacity to directly observe the experiences and programs that young children encounter each day allows poor quality programs to persist.
Providing more cash subsidy to alleviate rising prices in child care does not ensure that staff skills are improved. Government faces on-going strategic problems if the strategies that have prevailed over the past decade are sustained. Keeping direct cash subsidies to parents in pace with the price of care is demonstrably failing as prices continue to rise while quality continues to be raised as a concern.
The combination of private-for-profit provision and indirect government funding of ECEC services (through subsidy to parents) makes subsidy, price, revenue and profit heavily interrelated. The current strategy adds value to child care businesses but does not give government direct input into the price and the quality of care.
Poor quality care for relatively high prices is a toxic combination for children and their parents, as well as for the taxpayer and for society in the long term. Starting Strong II argued for more attention to supply-side funding of early childhood services in order to ensure equity of access for young children and to allow control of quality.
The rise and rise of education in addressing ECEC programs does not mean a move toward a ‘schooling’ model. The four pillars of education articulated by Jacques DeLors – to know, to do, to live together and to be – from birth, set the ground for how people will respond to the compulsory school phase and to later life challenges.
Persistent viewing of ‘child care’ and ‘preschool’ as separate entities not related to education would ensure that the so called ‘Education Revolution’ is built on sand. It is time for a public and universal approach to accessing good quality ECEC as the entitlement of the children themselves. The promise of 15 hours per week of early childhood education for all four year-olds, implemented in a new integrated model of ECEC promises to advance opportunities for young children.
New thinking about investment in this area demands broader conceptualisation. Investment construed primarily as the supply of funds omits the core elements that justify paying public attention to this area. Investing in children involves commitment in time, thought and action as well as funding.
Investment is necessary both at individual and state level. Individual investment in infants, toddlers and young children is not only the business of mothering and motherhood.
Should Australia’s policy in ECEC remain rooted in a mindset of ‘mothers are best’, ‘mothers know best’ – a reflection of the social and moral compass shaped in the 50s – then it cannot serve contemporary Australian life.
Where children are recognised as citizens in their own right, as people deserving publicly provided professional care and education, the programs that are designed address learning, development, attitudes and dispositions. Such programs have sustained effect on personal well-being, academic achievement and future work and life participation.
In Australia today, nobody knows what differences in quality there are among the varied forms of early childhood education and care provision – for-profit long-day care centres, community-based centres, private and state preschools, home based care.
Nobody can clearly quantify the long-term benefits or detriments of these types of provision in Australia, using Australian evidence. Nobody can state what effect a less buoyant private care market and a more buoyant community-based approach has on child outcomes.
Longitudinal research designed to answer these questions in Australia is embryonic. We have strong leads from international studies but well-designed, focused Australian research is critical for future policy development.
Article reproduced with thanks to Voice, the University of Melbourne newspaper.