Early childhood moves

Volume 6 Number 2 February 8 - March 8 2010

Children like two year old Carisse engage in play-based learning in quality early childhood education and care settings that will establish the best patterns for life-long learning.
Children like two year old Carisse engage in play-based learning in quality early childhood education and care settings that will establish the best patterns for life-long learning.

The 2009 financial collapse of ABC Learning and its subsequent rescue by NGO consortium GoodStart, alongside new state and federal policies on education for children birth to eight years signal a new – and very welcome – direction for Australian Early Childhood Education and Care, writes Chair of ECEC at the University of Melbourne, Professor Collette Tayler.

The take-up by GoodStart – a consortium of four leading Australian NGOs – of 678 ABC Learning centres gives Australia a fresh opportunity to change the face of its early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision.

With some 15 per cent of the long-day care market under GoodStart leadership there is now a unique opportunity to pull back from a system that focused primarily on supply of ‘places’ for young children so that parents could take part in the paid labour market, to one with a bigger social purpose: a system that addresses the development and learning of the very young as a primary priority.

An immediate example of the culture change in the oversight of these ABC centres is the preparedness of the leadership to participate in research. When it operated as a publicly listed company, management rarely allowed research access.

The five Social Purpose goals set out by GoodStart are well aligned with research conducted by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE) at the University of Melbourne, and in fact experts from the school offered guidance and advice on their formulation.

These Social Purpose goals are intended to faciliate cultures in ECEC settings in which quality, accessibility, affordability and stability of care are primary concerns, rather than the concerns for profit-making and shareholder return on investment which has heretofore complicated the issue of care and support for young children in Australia.

Around Australia at federal, state and municipal levels, sound, intentional practices for care and education are being articulated which flag the potential for ECEC in Australia to move forward and flourish.

Defined variously as ‘social purpose goals’ or ‘practice principles’, the effect is for ECEC settings to strive toward being Centres of Excellence in the community so that parents, early carers and educators can go to work feeling confident in their children’s care, development and learning.

A family-centred approach is key, and settings which work alongside families by promoting strong parental and family involvement in centre programming and development are envisioned, ensuring the best possible foundations for children in centre-based care.

ECEC settings should also be effective local service and learning hubs for the continuum of support that families need to thrive. Such settings can support the access and inclusion of diverse children by active engagement in disadvantaged communities or with disadvantaged cohorts within more privileged communities.

The goals advocate structural change to children’s services in Australia by improving the levels of investment, systems and organisational structures. This investment will include commitment to advocacy and partnerships with leading thinkers and policy-framers and engagement with government.

These goals are also fundamental to the intent and content of the Master of Teaching course operating through MGSE, a course that already has seen the establishment of Agreements with five Local Governments to establish integrated professional learning sites (EC networks) to advance the professional work of those working with the very young.

Specialist training and leadership is critical to the effective conduct of ECEC programs.

Most early childhood care and education outside the home happens in a play-based learning environment that, on the surface, may appear to be simple, unstructured and low-level. Yet specialist training and leadership is critical to the effective conduct of ECEC programs.

Staff need the skills to ensure supportive development and learning for young children: the capacity to diagnose subtle as well as obvious changes in the condition of children, the skill to liaise closely with parents and other staff to support individual development and advance learning, the design competence to prepare informal, well-structured programs and the relational skills to build, for each child, a secure engaging environment. An instrumental view of this work combined with limited direct observations in ECEC programs by the parents who enrol their children, can allow low quality programs to continue.

If the social purpose goals of GoodStart and similarly intentioned providers facilitate improvements in the content and quality of the program, child outcomes are expected to improve.

The growing importance of education as a potential leader in re-conceptualising early child care and preschool education corresponds with an embrace of life-long learning that has been promoted by the OECD since the emergence of mid-1990s knowledge-based economies. The culture and focus of work within early childhood centres is changing.

The very early years of life set the ground for how people will respond to later formal education and later life challenges. Government funding to support ECEC programs is provided in recognition that society benefits if ECEC programs are strong.

Funding increases should be conditional on higher standards in programs and an open dialogue with research and the community. GoodStart leadership that is driven by clear social purpose goals and the expertise needed to manage such provision has substantial capacity to change the benchmark for child care and early education in Australia.

Improvements in the education and care of young children are a central plank in the COAG Productivity Agenda. In this sector the combination of private-for-profit provision and indirect government funding of early childhood care and education services (through subsidy to parents) makes subsidy, price, revenue and profit heavily interrelated.

The current strategy of cash being provided to parents adds value to child care and early education businesses but does not give government direct input into the price and the quality of care. Starting Strong II (OECD 2006) – a paper co-authored by myself and John Bennett argued to give more attention to ‘supply-side’ funding of early childhood services in order to ensure equity of access for young children and to give greater control of program quality.

It will be very interesting to observe how the entry of GoodStart into the child care arena impacts the market. It must be of interest to Government when there is, concurrently, a push to raise the quality of early childhood provision.

Many Australians persist in viewing child care and preschool as separate entitities, the former construed as child-minding or baby-sitting and the latter endorsed because children benefit from educational experiences in groups prior to their entry into a formal schooling system.

In this ‘split functions’ system, when children attend one type of service in lieu of the other (or when children live in locations where programs and choices do not exist), the programs they access can either limit or promote development and learning and readiness for school. There is converging international evidence from developmental science and economics indicating early childhood education and care programs are socially and economically prudent investments.

The case for investment in early childhood has grown markedly in light of the benefits that ensue for both the individual and society, but if ‘investment’ is construed primarily to be the supply of funds then important elements of the ECEC investment arguments are lost.

Investing in children involves commitment in time, thought and action as well as funding. Investment is necessary both at individual and societal level. Caring for and supporting infants, toddlers and young children is not only the business of mothering and motherhood.

Australia’s policy in ECEC is rooted in a mindset of ‘mothers are best’, ‘mothers know best’ – a reflection of the social and moral compass shaped in the 1950s. In contemporary Australia it is critical that children receive optimal care and support within their families. It should be recognised also that children are citizens in their own right, people who deserve publicly provided professional care and education at a time in their lives when the benefits can be very large.

This is not an ‘either or’ but a ‘both and’ argument for giving children the best start in life. The attitudes and dispositions that children acquire in their early years have sustained effect on personal wellbeing, academic achievement, work and life participation.

We do not yet know empirically what differences in quality there are in Australia 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. We cannot yet clearly quantify the long-term benefits or detriments of these types of provision in Australia. We cannot yet determine what effect a less buoyant private-for-profit care market and a more buoyant community sector has on child outcomes. Longitudinal research designed to answer these questions in Australia is under way, led by the University of Melbourne through the ARC-funded E4Kids Study (see break out).

The Australian Government, and almost all State and Territory governments now combine the child care and preschool sectors under a broader education structure. The OECD report Starting Strong II made the case for ECEC to be integrated under one Australian ministry that valued the broad ideals of education for both staff and the children with whom they engage.

The time is right – it is a tipping point for ECEC provision in Australia, with the potential for systemic change to occur.

Professor Collette Tayler is the Chair of Early Childhood Education and Care in the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education. With John Bennett she was author of the OECD publication Starting Strong II and she is lead researcher on the ARC-funded E4Kids project, a longitudinal study of quality in the provision of educational programs across all ECEC settings in Australia.
http://www.to come