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| Child care moves to education
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| Early learning is being taken seriously
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Malcolm Turnbull's new government has been quick to reorganise, with early childhood education and care (ECEC) being moved from social services to education.
This is a huge step in recognising the important role that child care plays in a child's early learning development.
Child care really sits across several portfolios and it's difficult to pigeonhole, particularly with the more recent emphasis of early childhood education vs the traditional concept of child care simply being about minding children while their parents are at work.
Child care policy is related to social welfare, education, employment and health and so it's changed location several times. Should it fall under social services or education?
In Australia, as in many other countries, learning and education are often separate to child care, but they're not mutually exclusive. A child's learning and development in the years before school and the impact it has on the child's future is becoming more and more apparent.
Child care in its various forms now plays such an important role in our children's early learning, that it's clear that child care has to be included in the education portfolio. Malcolm Turnbull agrees.
In a recent article in The Conversation, Susan Krieg, Associate Professor at Flinders University, highlights the fact that 'early learning isn't a means to an end, it's an end in itself'.
Extract from the article in The Conversation:
"Similar to the situation in many Western countries, the establishment of child care services in Australia was related primarily to women's participation in the labour market.
The emphasis in child care was on health and therefore practices focused on hygiene, safety and regularity of routines such as sleeping, eating and toileting.
In comparison, historically, preschools had primarily educational aims. The emphasis was on learning.
While internationally and within Australia there have been many attempts to align the purposes of child care and education, the common perception is that they are different. One of the underpinning assumptions of this difference is that "real" learning begins at school (or preschool).
Most often engagement with the "three Rs" is viewed as more important than the learning that has occurred before it. This perception persists despite the research evidence from neuroscience, economics and social science that the experiences and learning in the first 2000 days of life, before a child enters primary school, are critical in establishing trajectories in health, learning and behaviour.
From this perspective, care and education are the responsibility of the individual family rather than a shared task between family, community and government. Children are caught in the middle as "profitable assets".
It's a positive move to shift ECEC responsibility back to the education portfolio. This move signals the importance of learning in the early years, rather than positioning childcare as primarily a welfare or labour market issue.
The countries that view child care as a public, shared, important responsibility demonstrate the relationship between consistent ongoing investment in early childhood education and long-term educational outcomes.
If Australia is to live up to its aspirations of being the innovative clever country, it needs to pay serious attention to the learning that occurs before children enter primary school. Viewing childcare as important learning rather than babysitting so mum can go to work is a good place to start."
For the full article click here.
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