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If January media reports are anything to go by, children’s issues are going to be hot topics this year. Nationally, stories have focused on the ‘shambles’ of child care; shortages of child care places; reporting and assessment; improving parenting; and boosting preschool and early educational opportunities, especially early literacy skills.
It will be interesting to see how schools handle requirements for ‘relative and comparative reporting of a child’s progress and achievement against the performance of the child’s peer group at the school’ for their early years classes (Schools Assistance [Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity] Act 2004, Regulation 2.3 [1]). Certainly, teachers need good diagnostic information on children, and parents want to know how they’re progressing. But how this will be put into practice will be interesting to watch. It seems that the ACT Government has won a concession exempting kindergarten students from the new assessment rules (Canberra Times, 14 January 2006, p. 7).
Today, early childhood services are very complicated—with a myriad of providers and service types; and a bewildering array of funding bodies, and legislative, regulatory, licensing frameworks.
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There are considerable differences in quality, accessibility, opportunity and cost across the country. Many children miss out on early childhood programs altogether.
The fact is, since the current twin-system of child ‘care’ and preschool ‘education’ developed about 100 years ago, much has changed. For a start, family dynamics: most women and mothers work outside the home and their jobs are quite different from those of the mid- and even late-twentieth century. They need early childhood services to match both their work needs and children’s developmental and learning needs.
But child care is more than funding a place. Young children’s care must be part of a broader package that nurtures development in the preschool years. ‘Care’ alone is insufficient to build the understandings and skills that ensure early development and successful transition to school. Experts agree that rich, positive early learning and educational experiences are essential.
Social, intellectual and physical development in early childhood is dependent on both care and education. These are inseparable, yet don’t necessarily go hand in hand in early childhood services in Australia.
Few people can begin to imagine the complexity of early childhood provision until they are forced to negotiate the early childhood maze. A case in point is the experiences of this year’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances who are starting the child care search. Even with the recent increase in child care places, care is scarce and, even when available, costs more than many mothers earn. However, the fact that child care and preschool fees can be so expensive comes as no surprise to people involved in providing quality care and education programs. The major costs—premises and staff—are high, especially in major cities.
Among my immediate female colleagues and friends, the child care arrangements are mind-boggling—just as they are in the community. Most have amazingly complex arrangements that involve extraordinary juggling and travel between parents and their jobs: stay-at-home dads, grandparents, nannies, friends, home-based (unregulated) care, child care, sessional preschool, work-from-home and flexible work rosters. These arrangements are mainly a consequence of the expense and scarcity of child care.
As I mentioned in a recent article (Canberra Times, 18 January 2006), early childhood care and education must sit better with the needs of contemporary families. The current early childhood service approaches were designed for a different time and place.
To move forward there must be serious bipartisan planning for a comprehensive, seamless national approach to early childhood care and education, with local sensitivity, including communication with schools, to meet families’ demands for quality care and children’s need for enriching early developmental and educational experiences.
The challenge is more than just providing child care places. It is about national agreement on vision, goals and policy for young children’s care and education; and then action to create and fund a universally acceptable system of quality early childhood education and care to meet the diverse needs of families and their children. This is no easy task.
Clearly, families are the key providers of early childhood care and their needs must inform child care policy and practice. In this issue of Every Child we focus on families and parenting. Connecting parents and early childhood services is critical to successful programs and outcomes for children—and to do this our writers explore a range of topics, from grandparenting to early childhood centres as family-friendly workplaces.
Alison Elliott
Editor
Every Child
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