Mid-way into the endless 2016 election campaign, Labor has released the details of its early childhood education and care policies.
Tag: fees
It’s time to tackle a topic that has been an undercurrent of this blog for quite some time. Warning to regular readers – this entry will either absolutely infuriate you, or ring true.
The last week or so has seen a number of articles, primarily in Fairfax papers, on the rise of “premium” childcare.
Julia Davison, CEO of not-for-profit group Goodstart Early Learning, said:
…for-profit centres, faced with rising costs, were choosing to set up where they could charge more for ”premium” care.
‘There is much more incentive for for-profit operators to set up in those localities where you can charge a high fee and where you’re going to get a high occupancy than there is for them to set up in middle or lower economic suburbs,” she said.
This has been a steadily growing niche of the market for quite some time. They are in the business of offering “boutique” care for children of high-income families in well-heeled suburbs.
Extra services can include massage for infants, dance classes, yoga – all inclusive in a large fee.
It’s important at this point to be clear that these services are working exactly as the early childhood system in Australia allows them to. Deregulation of the sector throughout the 90s and early 2000s were designed to create exactly this kind of private model – the market has spoken.
The issue of “premium” centres, or indeed the very notion of for-profit early learning for children, is not an legal one, or an economic or financial one.
But is an ethical one.
For me, it comes down to a single question. Does every child in Australia have the right to quality, well-resourced early learning environments, or only those whose parents can afford it?
This is a question that the Australian early childhood sector will have to reflect on, and fast.
I’ve put my cards on the table a number of times, in a number of forums, but I’m happy to state my opinion clearly again now.
Profiting from early learning for Australia’s children is ethically and morally dubious.
There are undoubtedly excellent, passionate and highly-trained educators, managers and professionals working in for-profit spaces. Some of them may be reading this post, and be highly offended.
I regret that result, but I cannot swerve from the overriding position. Quality education is a human right for children, and profiting from that human right skews perspectives.
It is the reason there is a highly organised lobby organisation, the Australian Childcare Alliance, advocating for winding back of quality reforms. They eat into profit margins.
As soon as profit is a motive, it tends to become the dominant motive.
However, as I have already stated, this is the system that we work in. For a number of reasons, community not-for-profits cannot currently provide total coverage of Australia for early learning access.
That is a fact, and it also a fact that private operators meet that need for access.
(It is important at this point to say that there is no reason that these facts must be eternal. At a political level, advocacy must be directed towards appropriate funding of community not-for-profit models to meet that demand. A gargantuan task, but not impossible.)
But the new niche of premium childcare, is in altogether another league. The idea that you can access high-quality, almost “luxury” early learning for your child if you happen to live in a wealthy suburb and earn enough money should ring warning bells.
It strikes right at the heart of what early childhood education should be about – the human rights of the child.
Beyond the ultimate exclusion of children who will simply be unable to attend these services, it entrenches and actively accelerates social inequity and injustice already evident in Australia.
The Early Years Learning Framework has respect for diversity as a foundational principle. The premium model inherently excludes that. Only those from a certain “class” (let’s call this what it is) and wage bracket can attend.
Children only socialising with children who are the most fortunate, and the most well-off. Families doing the same with those families.
But possibly the most concerning of all – educators who only have to work with children from a certain background. My mind spins as I think about how that would affect someone.
Not having to navigate a wide range of diversity. Not having to form respectful and committed relationships to families experiencing hardship and disadvantage. Not putting in the weeks, months and years of effort to support children experiencing vulnerabilities.
That has the potential to skew how you view children and families at a basic level. The repercussions to early childhood practice are far-reaching.
There will be those that say I have put myself and my own practice on an ethical pedestal. It’s extremely easy to cast stones.
I accept the fact that the system is not perfect. I work for a not-for-profit organisation, but despite that there are still those who will not be able to access our services.
I acknowledge that, and commit myself to advocacy to change this inequitable system.
But to be part of an organisation that clearly and unambiguously states “these are the kind of children we want to work with” is mind-boggling to me.
The sector operates within limited funding parameters. Desperately needed funds to support all children are being invested in premium providers.
Premium early learning costs families a lot, but it may ultimately cost the sector even more.
The due date for submissions to the Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into Childcare and Early Learning has now passed, and the Commission now begins the process of preparing a draft report for the Federal Government. This draft report will be available in early July.
It is worth discussing the likely paths that the Federal Government will take when the Commission delivers its final report at the end of October.
The National Quality Framework (NQF) was a national push to set baseline standards for children’s education and care. It was a Federal Labor initiative but was signed up to, and continues to be implemented by, State and Territory Governments of both sides of politics.
It set significant new standards for qualification requirements, ratios and supporting children’s learning to be phased in between 2012 and 2020.
Despite some showing some limited support during the 2013 election campaign, the Government has generally attacked the quality reforms as being an unnecessary regulatory burden and described centres as drowning “in a sea of red tape”.
The Assistant Minister for Education Sussan Ley has directly linked the implementation of the NQF to a sharp increase in fees for families.
The biggest political issue in the children’s education and care sector is affordability. Between June 2012 and June 2013 there was a 45c rise in the average hourly fee for children’s services in Australia, on top of similar increases in the preceding years.
When in Opposition, the Coalition used the fee increases to consistently attack the Labor Government.
It is clear from the most recent data that the out-of-pocket spend for families remained at a relatively low level of 8-9% of total income across all income brackets, due to Labor’s increase in the Child Care Rebate from 30% to 50%.
But due in part the byzantine nature of the subsidy system and an effective political campaign of negativity from the Opposition, the narrative on runaway fee increases struck a chord with families.
The Coalition has strived to continue that narrative in Government, firmly placing the current issues of affordability onto the Labor Party.
The Government will surely be aware however that this will only work for a short period of time. Politically, this issue will soon be owned solely by them.
The Government has so far resisted committing to any specifics on changes to the childcare sector, stating that they are waiting for the Productivity Commission to provide their final report.
But when it comes, the Government will need to provide a clear and detailed response to the issues facing the sector.
The key funding lever for the Government is the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate subsidies (both introduced by the Howard Government).
They may seem completely unconnected, but recent refusals by the Government to provide industry assistance to Holden and SPC Ardmona may actually provide us with some insight into their thinking on the CCB/CCR subsidy.
The decision to deny assistance packages to those companies has demonstrated that the Government is prepared to make tough decisions on spending taxpayer money to support businesses.
The childcare sector is currently a majority private enterprise, with private operators making over two-thirds of the sector. The rest are run as not-for-profit community services.
The CCB/CCR subsidy essentially acts as indirect industry assistance to the operators of children’s services. Approximately $5 billion a year is spent on that subsidy – a not insignificant amount of money. Is it possible that the Government would consider lowering that amount of subsidy?
This would come at a huge political cost. In the June quarter 2013 over 742,000 families accessed some form of formal childcare.
Having spent their time drawing attention to the affordability issue as a political weapon, the onus is now on the Government to take steps to address it.
To complicate matters, they have instructed the Productivity Commission that any suggestions they put forward must be within “current funding parameters”. This leaves them with only a few options.
Either the CCB/CCR subsidy is lowered, a politically “courageous” decision as Sir Humphrey might put it, or the quality standards currently being implemented by the National Quality Framework are drastically rolled back.
Given the political considerations, the second option is far more likely. Which puts a lot of the Government’s statements in the media into context.
The focus on “over-regulation” and “red tape” in the media since the implementation on the NQF, and its intense focus over recent weeks, can be seen as laying groundwork for a large-scale downgrading of those reforms.
They can be sold not as a cut on quality outcomes for children, but as a cut on red tape.
This would be a disastrous outcome for Australia’s children. Advocates for quality education and care have stressed the importance of taking early learning seriously as in investment in Australia’s future prosperity.
It would be shame indeed if political expediency hampers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the Productivity Commission Inquiry to recommend sweeping structural reforms to quality and affordability – without choosing one over the other.
The June 2013 quarterly from the Department of Education on ECEC will be available later today [UPDATE: is now available here], and the political brawl of affordability has already begun according to Judith Ireland.
The Education Department’s June 2013 quarter report on childcare and early learning, released on Monday, shows the average fee, per hour, of long day care was $7.50 between April and June last year, when Labor was still in power – up from a $5 average in the September quarter of 2007, at the end of the Howard government.
”Childcare now costs the average parent about an extra $70 per week per child than it did before Labor took office – for the exact same number of hours,” Assistant Education Minister Sussan Ley said. ”That’s extremely concerning.”
Sussan Ley and the Government are of course delighted with these figures and we will no doubt be hearing a lot of them over the next few months as the Productivity Commission does its work.
Kate Ellis has of course hit back at the claim, accusing the Government of being “sneaky” with the figures (but with no further details, at least in the media at the moment).
Labor raised the Child Care Rebate from 30% to 50%, and have always used this as their standard defence against political attack on this issue. It seems unlikely that this will work this time.
As Sam Page from Early Childhood Australia points out:
Early Childhood Australia chief executive Samantha Page said with wages making up about 80 per cent of long day care costs, wage increases over the six-year period would account for a ”fair proportion” of the cost change. But she said Labor had not adequately funded a 2012 national quality framework, that included reforms such as standardising child-to-staff ratios.
Labor’s failure to adequately prepare for the implementation of the National Quality Framework, and the resultant impact on operational costs for centres and therefore fees, is now reaping the obvious political dividends.
As I’ve written before, the National Quality Framework was a significant and critical reform that was carried out by Labor. But Ministers Kate Ellis and Peter Garrett both seemed completely oblivious to the broader landscape of ECEC.
Raising the CCR was supposed to be their cover for affordability and cost-of-living attacks from the then-Opposition. But as was inevitable, this encouraged a huge uptake in the usage of children’s services, long day care in particular. This pushed up waiting lists, particularly in the 0-2 age range, leading to regular media reports on inaccessibility.
The new qualification standards by themselves were always going to see fee increases for a sector that has always struggled to recruit and retain qualified staff. The signature failure of the NQF implementation was the seeming desire of the ALP Government to pretend there ever was a staffing problem (until in an election year it became politically convenient to finally realise). A funding and training package for this issue, that covered the entire sector, should have been rolled out in parallel with the NQF.
The ALP will spend 2014 being hit repeatedly over the head with the accessibility and affordability issue. They spent their time in Government pretending that quality wouldn’t cost anything. Will they spend their time in Opposition developing an early childhood education policy that can structurally address these issues?
The Government will of course continue their attacks – but this potentially leaves them with a very tricky problem.
Going on and on about affordability particularly rather implies that they think something should be done about it. At this stage they are refusing to commit to anything before the outcome of the Productivity Commission report.
But by raising this as a regular issue for the public, the Government will at some stage be held responsible for it. They will have to look at measures to improve affordability. But this Government is determined to be seen as economic conservatives – it seems unlikely that further increases to the CCR or CCB would be on the cards.
But what are their options? In their terms of reference the Productivity Commission has been instructed that any recommendations must be “within current funding parameters”.
This leaves the troubling conclusion that the only way to reduce fees for families is to roll back quality standards, particularly qualification requirements and ratios.
If that’s the case, we’re looking at the groundwork for that announcement today.
It was a huge honour to be invited to speak at Community Child Care Co-operative’s 35th Birthday event, alongside such incredible early childhood “rockstars” as Alma Fleet, Eva Cox, Lisa Bryant, Anthony Semann and more. For those on Twitter, check out the hashtag #CCCCis35 to check out some of the incredible moments from the day.
The post below is my prepared presentation at the event – there were some minor changes on the day which reflected what I had heard and been inspired by in the previous presentations.
I would also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather today, the Cadigal People of the Eora Nation. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land I call home and work from, the Ngunnawal People.
I’d like to wish Community Child Care Co-operative a very Happy 35th Birthday! It is a great honour to be invited by them to speak with you today. As CCCC has been such a positive and powerful force for advocacy in NSW and around Australia, to be invited to speak on that topic is somewhat nerve-wracking!
It is also a huge privilege to be speaking alongside such incredible educators, activists and leaders in the sector. I’ve worked with some of you professionally in the past, some of you I’ve followed through your writing, and some of you I’ve had long arguments with on Twitter.
It was particularly exciting to meet the wonderful Lisa Bryant (@lisajbryant) in person today, who has been a regular social media sparring partner! The early childhood community on social media is growing each day, which can only be a fantastic development.
The ability of social networking and online forums, such as Early Childhood Australia’s NQS Forum, are invaluable to the ongoing discussions, disagreements and arguments that will be shaping the future of our sector.
The late Christopher Hitchens once said that “Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.”
So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those in this room that I have spent valuable time “discussing” the finer points of early childhood policy with.
My talk today is focused on policy and politics – hopefully it will be a little more interesting than that sounds!
I set up my blog to explore the nexus between children, policy and politics – obviously particularly focused on the early childhood education and care sector.
As a sector, I don’t think we’ve successfully explored or acted in that space. With my usual arrogance and desire to hear my own voice, I figured I’d have a go.
This is not to denigrate the exceptional work of advocates and activists in this room, or advocacy organisations like CCCCNSW, who do incredible work.
But we need to acknowledge that our advocacy has not been as successful, or as strategic, as we need it to be.
Galling though it may be, we also need to acknowledge that the private operators do advocacy better.
They’re kicking our backsides. The Australian Childcare Alliance has a full-time lobbyist at Parliament House.
They’ve cultivated a close relationship with the new Assistant Minister for Education, Sussan Ley. A close-enough relationship that there is a more-than-passing resemblance to each other’s press releases.
The political agenda on children’s early education in this country is shaped by that advocacy.
So I have worked to focus my advocacy on policy, and politics.
My drive for advocacy has grown as my career has grown. My first love is working directly with children, but my career has slowly moved me away from day-to-day work with them. First as a Centre Director, and now as the ACT Territory Manager for Goodstart Early Learning.
The face-to-face work with children is crucial, it’s everything – and I salute those of you here today who are still in those roles.
From the first time I took on a Director’s role, I felt a powerful responsibility to advocate for the work of those in my team who were doing that tricky and complex work every day as Team Leaders, or assistant educators.
For me, this started with the Big Steps campaign. Although Directors are certainly not paid enough for the work they do, I felt that the privilege of the higher pay-rate, the ability to manage my own time, the greater ability with which I could access professional development and networking opportunities, conferred on me an ethical responsibility to advocate.
This has been particularly clear to me in my current role as an Area Manager – particularly in the new world of the National Quality Framework.
The Framework ask a lot of Centre Directors – they are legally responsible for their centres, with all the pressures and challenges that entails.
Those of us in roles such as mine, without legislative responsibilities and with no direct day-to-day, ongoing work with children, are in what my Manager and professional mentor gleefully describes as “made-up jobs”.
I am not in the ECEC National Law. The Government has not deemed my job to be essential to the successful education and care of Australia’s children.
I’m going to assume there are people in similar positions in the room today – don’t worry, I won’t make you put your hands up!
What I would ask you to do is to reflect critically on your roles – my challenge to you is if you are not advocating tirelessly for those who are carrying out the day-to-day teaching and education with children, you are not doing your job.
I am fortunate to work with an incredible team of Centre Directors in the ACT, and I’d like to just acknowledge their professionalism and work in their communities of children, families and educators.
I reflect every day on the privileges that my “made-up” job entails me, and if I cannot justify my work to that group of incredible women at the end of the day – then it’s not worth me being there.
For me, this means that above and beyond my day-to-day work, of which advocacy is certainly a part, it also means advocating above and beyond my 38 hours a week.
Anything less I could not ethically justify.
My particular focus with advocacy is politics. Political advocacy has always been one of the most common, and most effective, forms of advocacy as it is targeted at those who actually make the decisions.
My interest in politics stemmed largely from growing up as a teenager in the Howard years. I don’t want to get into a big discussion around Right vs. Left, but those 11 years left a deep impression on me and many in my generation.
The issue that particularly engaged me was refugee policy.
It seemed incredible to me, as a naive sixteen-year old, that we could actually make laws and decisions that treated people so cruelly.
That women and men working comfortably in offices in one of the most prosperous nations on Earth could sign documents and make telephone calls that would directly imperil the lives of people fleeing persecution that I could not even imagine.
Now, being from Canberra for the last 15 years, it’s very easy to reduce politics to bureaucracy – to people passing paper around with little-to-no impact on the real lives of people.
Our politics and policies on refugees and asylum seekers helped me realise that politics and policy have a direct impact on every one of our lives, whether we know it or not.
Just as those decisions can directly impact people fleeing persecution from outside Australia, decisions made in Canberra have a direct and deep impact on the work we do, and the communities we do it in.
They are the frameworks we put around our society.
The connection with early childhood policy took a bit longer to come to me, but since then it has informed my work as a professional in this sector.
It particularly “clicked” for me when I came to a single, clear realisation about our work.
Children’s education and care policy in this country is not about children.
It is about workforce participation.
The childcare sector in Australia is entirely set up, resourced and funded to ensure that families are at work and contributing to the economy. This fact informs every part of our sector, every challenge and every frustration.
Australia’s entire policy focus on early childhood education, on both sides of politics, Labor and Liberal, and even in far-left parties like the Green, has nothing to do with children.
This almost made sense in the 1970s, when getting women into the workforce wasn’t just a social and moral challenge, but a practical one.
Women with children were expected to remain at home.
The strides that have been made in gender equality since then are due in no small part to the creation of a formal, regulated and affordable childcare sector.
Greater numbers of women in the workplace have forced organisations to slowly (in some cases, extremely slowly) adapt to the 21st Century.
The childcare sector played a large role in that, and is overwhelmingly positive. But more than 40 years later, the paradigm needs to shift.
It’s no longer enough for us to accept that the early childhood education and care sector is just there to “babysit” children so their parents can contribute to the economy.
The latest figures from DEEWR tell us that for the first time in Australia’s history, over a million children are now in some form of ECEC. This is a staggering amount, and represents a major challenge for Australian society.
At the beginning of my talk I mentioned our friend Judith Sloan. It’s important to analyse her perspective on ECEC beyond her ridiculous comments about “dimwits”.
Her article points to the underlying tension of our work. The notion of universal access early childhood education for all children is a direct attack on conservative “family values”.
The conservative argument is essentially that the best place for a child, any child, is in a stable home with Mum and Dad (certainly not two Dads, or two Mums, but we’ll save that for another time).
I never attended childcare when I was a young child. I still did well in school, have a University degree (admittedly not from a Uni that would meet with Judith’s approval) and have a great job in a sector I love.
My parents had no degrees in early childhood education, but helped set my brother and I up to work hard in our studies (primary, secondary and tertiary) and in our work.
My story would provide “evidence” for conservatives that access to early childhood programs is unnecessary and a waste of taxpayer money.
However, I was extremely fortunate to have two well-educated, stable and loving parents with no mental health issues or other vulnerabilities.
I was given every chance to be successful, even before I was in school.
But we are part of a society where not every child has those same opportunities. Some children will grow up in challenging and disruptive environments, where their parents are suffering immense challenges of their own.
Advocating for universal access to ECE is about ensuring that any child, no matter the circumstances of their home life, can be given the same head start I was given.
So I believe that we are getting near a crossroads – I would actually like us to be at that crossroads now, but unfortunately I think we’re a way off even from that.
Brain research consistently tells us that the first five years are absolutely crucial. Long-term studies like the Australian Early Development Index and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children also point to those formative years as the building blocks for later life.
With a million children now accessing some form of childcare in those foundational five years, it is no longer good enough for our sector to just be about workforce participation.
We have the incredible opportunity to be improving children’s lives right here and now, and in so doing drastically lower their risk of experiencing vulnerability throughout the rest of their lives.
Children who struggle early will continue to struggle, and will find it harder to engage in formal learning and study, increasing the challenges they will face in employment and housing.
These foundational years all take place before children set foot in a school – and yet our entire education focus for children, from a policy and political perspective, only really begins in Year 1 of school.
So is Australia ready to leave behind the paradigm of workforce participation, and adopt a truly child-centred approach to ECEC?
Yes, the majority of states and territories have some form of funded preschool, but it’s telling that over the last 2-3 years of public debate around David Gonski’s school reforms, preschool and long day care was conspicuously absent.
I’ll be blunt – that our sector was not represented in those policy discussions points to a significant failure on our part, and the need to significantly raise our levels of advocacy.
This was our chance to raise our voices – the challenges we as a society will be helping children to face throughout their childhood years can, and MUST, be addressed in early childhood.
And yet, nothing.
I look at the recent election, and the only time early childhood education and care was mentioned was in terms of fees, waiting lists, planning permits and workforce participation.
Again, this represents a significant failure of our advocacy.
I’m sorry to be the person at the birthday party who brings the tone down, and I understand I won’t be getting many invites to other parties after today!
But if we are to take our advocacy leadership seriously, we need to acknowledge our challenge.
There are advocates in this room who have done incredible work, who have spoken and written and banged their fists on tables around the country. CCCC has done incredible work.
But despite all of that, we have not shifted majority opinion. We have not changed enough minds.
The debate in Australia, beyond these walls today, is not about universal access. It’s not about children’s rights. It’s not about the potential for ECEC to lift children out of structural disadvantage.
It’s about fees. It’s about freezing the CCR. It’s about “flexible opening hours”.
As leaders in our sector, and as advocates for children, we have to do better. It is unacceptable to do anything less.
We know the importance of what we do. We know the challenges, we know the structural inequities that stand in our way. It’s no use convincing the people in this room.
Our advocacy has to go beyond that.
We also know that if we are serious about improving outcomes for children; if we are serious about upholding children’s rights and their voice in our society; then we have to be the ones who are raising our voices.
If people aren’t listening, it’s our job to make them listen. Are we using every opportunity to raise the profile of our work, demonstrate our professionalism and inform people of our potential?
Are we creating opportunities to do those things?
So that is our challenge. I am not doing enough. None of us are.
Until we are having debates in cafes and offices around the best way to fund true universal access to early childhood education for children, we aren’t doing enough.
Until a journalist in a national, televised debate asks a candidate running for Prime Minister what their plans are to use ECEC to improve outcomes for children at a foundational level, we have not done enough.
Until the right of children to fully and freely participate in quality early learning programs is a national priority, and embracing that is a cornerstone of our education, family and health policies, we have not done enough.
So, enjoy the day and particularly enjoy the cocktail party tonight. Because tomorrow, we’ve got some work to do.
I’ve talked a lot about what we’re not getting right, despite the hard work of people in this room today. What are my thoughts on the next steps?
Above all, be fearless. Have arguments. Speak your truth.
Through my limited reach as a writer and participant on social media, I have forcefully and doggedly argued views that have infuriated and aggravated friends and colleagues.
A big one was the Early Years Quality Fund.
A fund that would only reach 40% of the sector, would only last two years and would be awarded on essentially a “first-come, first-served” basis?
This was a deeply flawed funding model, and in my view offensive to me, and those I work with.
I publicly stated that I could not ethically support this Fund, and criticised United Voice for agreeing to it.
In the lead-up to the election, I also publicly voiced my criticism of the Labor Government for their implementation of the National Quality Framework.
This was at a time when the sector was being encouraged to almost band together and cheerlead for Labor.
My firm belief is that the Labor Government categorically failed to implement the NQF in a way that would ensure its survival and growth.
It was a once-in-a-generation chance to change the conversation on Childcare. Labor didn’t do it well enough.
Overlaying the requirements of the National Quality Framework without a plan to address the structural inequities of the system, including the sexist discrimination of low wages, was always going to be problematic.
Are they to be commended for at least attempting? Yes, but I cannot and will not allow partisanship to silence criticism where it is due.
The case for early childhood education reform is a generally “progressive” issue. But this does not mean that advocates for early childhood should just support and “cheerlead” for Labor.
As has been shown all too clearly with refugee policy, Labor is in many ways only a progressive party by comparison with the Coalition.
To put it clearly, blindly supporting Labor without criticism as the only progressive party in town means that if you are, you are now supporting sending pregnant women legally seeking asylum to a tent in Papua New Guinea.
It amazed me the amount of my progressive friends and colleagues who had joined the campaign for Labor, who were suddenly quiet about the issue of asylum seekers after the PNG “solution”.
They had been extremely happy to loudly berate and criticise the Liberal Party, quite rightly, for their policies.
Labor supporters who had criticised the undermining of Julia Gillard by Kevin Rudd and his supporters, suddenly donning Kevin 13 shirts after a quick change-up in the Labor leadership team quite soon before an election.
If the price of joining up with a political party is silence, it is too high.
Advocates should be fearless and furious with criticism. Advocacy should be targeted at politicians, without being tied to a single party.
Advocacy should be about our sector, not political victories for others.
I don’t like to give advice, but I would urge my colleagues in advocacy to remember that.
The issues surrounding our sector – feminism, contested rights between children and parents, the role of education in the social good – demand that we be strategic and smart with our advocacy.
Tying ourselves to a political party or a political ideology is a bad idea.
Another bad idea is to paraphrase Mark Twain, but as he very nearly said: “Loyalty to progressing the early childhood education sector: ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Advocacy is not just writing, not just attending rallies or forums. The Early Years Learning Framework encourages educators and teachers to look at every moment with a child, or group of children, as an opportunity to learn.
In exactly the same way, every moment in our day-to-day work is an opportunity to advocate for our professionalism, and the professionalism of the sector as a whole.
Every time you greet a family at the door, we could be advocating. Every time we have a pedagogical discussion with an educator, we could be advocating.
But I firmly believe we also have an obligation, and imperative, to advocate at that wider level – at the level of policy.
The Italian pedagogue and President of Reggio Children Carla Rinaldi encourages advocates to be a “megaphone for children’s voices”.
Aim it at Parliament House.
What made you angry? What frustrated you? When was your voice silenced? What made you want to yell at the TV screen, or your computer?
Write about it. Get it out there. Contact your local MP.
But do not fall victim of the “us versus them”, or “Left vs. Right”, or “Labor vs. Liberal”. As soon as we subsume our advocacy to that of a political ideology, we are no longer advocating. We’re advertising.
It can seem like a huge and uphill battle when you look at where the national discussion now.
Imagine having an election fought on the principles of children’s human rights and the magnifying and uplifting power of early childhood education.
It seems like at the moment as a people we are more focused on having cheap, available childcare.
But, fellow advocates, just remember, as Jon Stewart said, “You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn’t that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.”
Thank you very much.
Thanks again to Community Child Care Co-operative for inviting me to speak. You can check out their website at http://ccccnsw.org.au/.
Goodstart Early Learning has released the results of a survey conducted throughout June that sought opinions from Australian families on the early childhood education and care sector.
Goodstart chief executive Julia Davison said paid parental leave was not the main driver when it came to women’s participation in work. “Access to affordable quality childcare needed to be the second big leg of work and family policy alongside paid parental leave,” Ms Davison said.
“International research cited in a recent report by the Grattan Institute suggests that government support for childcare has about double the impact on female workforce participation as spending on paid parental leave. We would like to see the next government prioritising new investment into early learning and childcare so that parents do not end up wearing the additional cost of the quality reforms.”
Ms Davison said new investment should be an additional term of reference for the Coalition’s proposed Productivity Commission review of the sector. “Our government’s education spending priorities of inadequate investment in children’s early years do not reflect the priorities of Australian families and run counter to international best practice and research,” she said.
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Eva Cox: Fund ECEC directly
Long-time champion for early childhood education and care has written in Women’s Agenda today with her practical approaches to “fixing” the childcare crisis. Well-worth a read.
The Government needs to completely re-jig the funding system so it set up conditions and costs, as happens with nursing homes. They need to control and fund services that are in appropriate locations, places for different age groups and locally appropriate flexible hours of operating. This should also include some levels of fee control, to allow break even or profit levels but not excessive returns. The market model has shown it cannot meet diverse consumer needs under the current system so this industry should be deemed a market failure in need of more government intervention.
My only point of disagreement with Eva would be that her plan doesn’t go far enough. The Early Years needs to be fully integrated in to the education system, entirely free-to-access and entirely funded by Government.
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Greens plan to lower childcare fees
The Australian Greens are today releasing their plan to combine the Child Care Benefit (CCB) and Child Care Rebate (CCR) payments and increase the amount paid to some families. The plan is costed at $2.3 billion over 4 years.
Some families, however, would get little new assistance, while others stand to gain more because the system would be skewed to help those who need it most.
Greens childcare spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said there was a clear need to streamline funding mechanisms to provide assistance to more parents who need it and promote higher standards of care.
”The crisis in childcare means fees are skyrocketing and availability is dropping, especially in high-need areas,” she said.
”If Australian children are going to be cared for in centres with sufficient numbers of qualified staff, the government must commit to increasing support to the sector.
”Without increased funding to childcare, families won’t be able to have the high-quality, affordable, flexible care that they need.”
Source: The Age
Streamlining the assistance payments makes sense, but it’s disappointing to see yet another policy announcement from a major party that fails to address the structural problems facing the sector.
For a great look at how the sector needs structural reform, check out this great story from ABC Radio National.
UPDATE: Green’s policy detail now up here.
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Election 2013 – ECEC
We’re now into week three of the 2013 Election campaign. Early childhood education and care issues have bubbled into few announcements and press releases, but as usual has not been a key priority for any of the major parties.
Labor has committed to continuing the work of the National Quality Framework reforms, but has not announced any measures to support the sector to meet the unrealistic qualification requirements due to commence in 2014. Labor will also continue to support the pay equity case at Fair Work Australia, and money from the Early Years Quality Fund has already begun to roll out.
The Coalition will instigate a Productivity Commission into childcare affordability. Beyond that, no idea.
The Greens have announced $200 million “expanding and upgrading existing community childcare facilities”. The Greens have also committed to the NQF.
All in all, a disappointment. Politically, we are miles and miles away from where we should be as a sector.
At the moment I’m reading “Children’s Chances: How Countries Can Move from Surviving to Thriving” by Jody Heymann. It’s a great, recently-published and up-to-date analysis of data from almost every country in the world. It looks at a variety of metrics on children’s chances to survive and thrive, and has a couple of great chapters on education.
It highlights to importance of early childhood education on long-term outcomes for children. In Australia, the policy debate is still stubbornly framed around waiting lists, fees and council zoning issues.
As I have been saying despairingly to my colleagues over the last few weeks, the real driver of policies for children in this country is workplace flexibility. Ponder that and become depressed.
Until we can get the conversation back to children, and the potential benefits of investment on the early years, nothing is going to change.
The lovebirds special, which costs $95 and operates from 5pm to midnight at the NSW Academy of Early Learning in Casula, says an added bonus is that it is eligible for government rebates.
Owners Antony and Marc Elazzi said late-night care was much cheaper than hiring a babysitter.
“We believe that night care is the way of the future for the childcare industry,” Antony Elazzi said.
“We have created such a complicated world, where people have to work at night. The industry can provide a safe environment for children to stay which is regulated by the government, so that parents can work at night.”
Laura Speranza, Daily Telegraph (24/3/2013)
Well. It’s hard to know where to begin with this one.
This is where the for-profit chains, operators and advocates want to see the sector heading. This is “the future of the childcare industry”, according to Mr. Elazzi.
It’s a continuation of a trend that views ECEC as service for families, not as a right for children. The audacity of this proposal is shocking, and will of course be popular with some families. There will be no doubt some in the sector, perhaps even some of my own colleagues, who view this as a reasonable thing to do for some families.
But it needs to be completely clear that the view of ECEC as a learning and social right for children is completely incompatible with the view that “childcare” is a service for working families that can be twisted into any form that suits.
This is where the flexibility trials announced by Government will inevitably head, make no mistake. Any move to flexibility plays into the hands of profiteering private operators and fundamentally disadvantages children.
Advocates for children and for early learning and education in ECEC need to unite and take a stand on these kinds of issues. With 70% of the sector in the hands of private operators, this is an uphill battle – and we are losing.
Supporting working families and providing options for families is not the issue here. This needs to be worked through with a range of social and workforce policy measures – relying on ECEC to be all things to all families will be the end of any quality reforms we have started.
As for the educators of NSW Academy of Early Learning, any of them who have read this article must be thrilled to know their owners have such respect for them that they are being used as an option “cheaper than babysitting.”
What a lucky team.
Liam McNicholas 