On the second-to-last day of the 2013 Election campaign, the Coalition announced their early childhood education and care policy: The Coalition’s Policy for Better Child Care and Early Learning.
Rather surprisingly, given Sussan Ley’s statements in The Australian, the Coalition will seek to pause many of the most important reforms of the National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care.
With regards to staffing ratios:
The Coalition will work with State and Territory governments to review the implementation
of staff to child ratios to assess whether their implementation can be slowed to give the
sector enough time to absorb the changes and ensure continuity of service.
The Coalition are also targeting the new qualification requirements:
Given the concerns of the child care sector, the Coalition supports a review of child care
qualifications. We will seek the cooperation of the States and Territories to pause the
requirement that all staff should be qualified until the Australian Children’s Education
Quality and Care Authority has undertaken a full review of early childhood qualifications.
Given the shortage of ECTs, the Coalition believes that it makes sense to put on hold the
requirement for centres with more than 25 children to employ an ECT. We will delay this
requirement until a full review has been undertaken, and in the meantime look at possible
ways to encourage more people, particularly in rural and regional areas where shortages
are most noticeable, to study early childhood teaching.
The reforms to educator-to-child ratios and qualification requirements are rightly held up as key improvements to the sector. Research and practical experience from around the world has shown that these are crucial to quality outcomes for children.
It is important to remember that as the NQF is a product of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), any changes to the Framework will require the support of the States and Territories (which is acknowledged in the policy document).
I will be honest – I am conflicted about this policy announcement. Anyone expecting instant disapproval and blind support for the Labor Government’s implementation of the NQF reforms had probably better stop reading now.
I am completely supportive of the reforms – I have argued publicly that they do not actually go far enough.
I also completely dismiss the talk of “administrative” problems and the burden of red tape that the Coalition speak of – strict, clear and enforceable regulations are absolutely essential to ensure children’s health and safety. To put it bluntly, any ECEC organisation that cannot handle the “regulatory burden” shouldn’t be in business.
But…
I am forced to conclude that as things currently stand, the Coalition is not wrong to suggest that aspects of the NQF are put on hold.
This is not to say that Tony Abbott’s approach to ECEC is correct. The Coalition have no plan to address the structural issues they have identified, and will palm everything off to a Productivity Commission enquiry.
But this was inevitable, and it is entirely the fault of the Labor Government – specifically Ministers Kate Ellis and Peter Garrett.
As I have written before, the ECEC sector as a whole was never going to be ready to implement even the beginning of the qualification requirements by 2014.
The Government has entirely failed to ensure that the NQF would be embedded and immune from this inevitable announcement by the Coalition.
The NQF should have been accompanied with significant funding and support to the sector, and a long-term campaign to gain public support for the benefits of early childhood education.
Instead, we got a “Early Childhood Workforce Strategy” – an insulting 22-page pamphlet (I refuse to call it a document) that would have been laughed out of any sector or industry that the Government actually took seriously.
Families received the odd brochure or postcard, buried under an avalanche of Government advertising detailing how much money they were spending on rebates.
A bizarre and divisive fund for professional wages was delivered at the last-minute, which has only served to deepen the divisions and frustrations of the sector.
The Government’s implementation approach to the NQF seemed to be tossing it to the sector, and then wandering off with a quick “let us know how you get on”. Even with two years to meet the initial qualification requirements in 2014, huge swathes of the sector were never going to get there.
The best analogy I can think of is like asking a straight-jacketed person to do the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy – it was never going to go well.
Structural and foundational work needed to be done before these reforms could really flourish – the low wages and professional standing of the educators in the sector; the incompatibility of ECEC with for-profit providers; lack of targeted funding to support children and families with vulnerabilities, and the educators who work with them – just to name a few.
The straight-jacket holding the sector wasn’t removed – the Government didn’t even seem to notice that there were issues.
From that point of view, it is simple to argue that the reforms should be put on hold.
The Government has gifted the Coalition a major goal on ECEC. Their failure to invest the necessary funding and support into the sector has allowed the Coalition to persuasively argue that the reforms are not really that great and are actually making things worse.
As an advocate for the human right of each child in Australia to a quality education, and the potential power of our sector to raise children out of inequality and vulnerability, I am furious with the Government.
The National Quality Framework should have been the turning point the sector so badly needs. Many people reading this will cast me as now advocating against the reforms – to be clear, this is completely not the case.
Do I want to see the reforms to be slowed, or wound back? Absolutely not.
But there is little point in pushing ahead with the 2014 requirements that are simply impossible for the sector to meet. What is the point in having the requirements if half the sector is on waivers?
The mismanagement of the NQF implementation may hamper our fight for recognition and structural reform for years. What a legacy.
Liam McNicholas 
2 replies on “What does the Coalition’s ECEC policy mean for the sector?”
I really appreciate this conversation Liam. I partly agree with what you’re saying, but look at how we have moved, raised the bar in the time so far. Yeah there is so much chaos, isn’t that a good thing especially when perhaps in 5 years from now it maybe different, for the better of children’s rights. Unfortunately reforms need deadlines because, generally, people dislike change and can be resistent to any form of it. Deadlines and targets often motivate us to change, 2014 happens to be it, I think it’s dragging as it is on this one! I for one continue to advocate about the importance of qualifications knowing there is going to be bumpy road along the way, for a while. When I read the paragraph about the Coalitions comment about qualifications and pausing it due tonshortages I wondered if they would do that for ‘school teachers’, doctors, lawyers in regional and remote areas and waivered areas too. The government wouldn’t do this, so why do they consider it in ECEC area?
Thanks for commenting Alicia!
I absolutely agree that the NQF reforms are vital, integral to the work we do. The deadline itself is not the issue at all – it absolutely could have been reached, but only with a significant increase in supported funding to the sector, not to family rebates.
The problem is, the NQF should have been one half of the 2012 changes. The other half had to have been targeted support: including professional wages, beginning the very very slow process of getting the private operators reduced and eventually removed from the sector and direct funding of extra educators and eventually teachers to lower the ratios.
By only doing one, we were always headed towards this announcement from the Coalition. I realise that this piece is negative – but I truly believe that this could have been avoided.