Was it karma?

While the newspaper headlines suggest confusion over whether he quit or whether he was dumped, suffice to say Eddy Groves and his former lady love have been removed from all positions of power at ABC Learning.

It appears after continued destabilisation courtesy of the global credit crunch, which started to have its effects on ABC Learning earlier this year, our favourite helicopter-navigating, cowboot-wearing early childhood 'advocate' has been taken out. Apparently repeated failures to lodge accounts have sealed the deal.

As it happens it was only yesterday I was reading about Dr Le Neve Groves and her various roles in the company, including CEO of Education and Principal of the National Institute of Early Childhood Education, a place where ABC trains their own (always struck me as rather cult like), and with a PhD in early childhood to boot. So as ABC Learning announces its decision to replace Eddie with Rowan Webb, the former CEO of Colorado group (yes the shoes and lifestyle gear) I'm wondering if we shouldn't be getting a little nostalgic for the Groves, who at least had some dedication to early childhood?

Nah!

I am not opposed to privatisation or market principles as a rule. Privatising childcare (read children) was always going to be an ethical minefield, however if the markets had worked it could've been a subdued tone of discontent. However the market has spectacularly failed in childcare. How so? Let me count the ways....!

Despite providing much needed places and critical infrastructure, which is a virtue of privatisation we can't ignore, it has failed to push up quality and meet actual demand. Privately owned for-profit centres have been involved in actively arguing for maintenance of high child:staff ratios in children's services so it doesn't negatively impact their expenditure and consequently need to be passed on to shareholders. Also known is their tendency to hire the cheapest staff, therefore the least qualified staff they can get away with. In addition there's a practice amongst private for-profit centres of keeping places for the under-3's relatively low because the costs are higher. Hence our crisis in places for children under 3, which gets pushed on to other centres. A few weeks ago I popped into Lady Gowrie (now known just as Gowrie) in Melbourne and while waiting for something unrelated, I asked about their waiting list. Over 600, mainly babies and toddlers places needed. I wondered at the time whether I should try and engage in the logistical difficulty of putting a child I've yet to conceive on the waiting list!

Emma Rush and Christian Downie released a report last year into ABC Learning for the Australia Institute and they found that corporate chains provided the lowest quality of care in comparison to community owned non-profit centres and independent private centres. Additionally it has always been rather difficult for undergrad early childhood students to complete practicums in ABC Learning centres with an apparent code of silence around curriculum and general management issues. So much for aiding the professionalisation of the sector, surely an ethical priority for the largest childcare provider in the world...

And I could go on...

Despite the latest developments for Groves and ABC Learning's precarious position this does not mean the end of private childcare as we know it. Buying out ABC Learning and other private, commercial providers would be silly economics for the Federal government in hard financial times globally and locally. However with 260 new centres across the country promised by the Federal government over the next four years (38 in this Budget) and a focus on integration hopefully some balance might be restored to the sector and the positive effects of public and private investments might get closer to realisation.

Middle class angst eased... for now

Here's the latest news on how our hurried, middle class children are faring.

"Dr Hofferth found in her study of 331 children aged from nine to 12 that the best off led a balanced life with involvement in one or two activities, for less than four hours, over the two days tracked in the study. Almost 60 per cent of the children fell into this category. But even the 25 per cent who best fitted the description of "over-scheduled" were doing almost as well on a range of measures".

So the basic message in the rest of the article is that kids who engage in some extracurricular activities can benefit, providing their cortisol levels aren't shooting through the roof. Moderation and balance are key.

Kids with no extracurricular activities however are now in the spotlight as they apparently lack self esteem and social skills. This inevitably, although unwillingly and unwittingly on behalf of the researchers I'm sure, feeds into a 'poor people are responsible for their own poverty' mentality because it will be the poor and disadvantaged children who are less likely to engage in extracurricular activities . Poor social skills and low self esteem are also attributed to children who don't attend early childhood services. It could be interesting to break the research down into which children attended some form of early childhood service and which did not to see how early years education may or may not ameliorate those low self esteem and social skills issues for the children who do not get to engage in regular French, ballet and tennis lessons!

NSW experiences a cuddling crisis!

This is one of those stories that makes you wonder how the government, in this case the NSW government, prioritises its spending.

"A handout being distributed through child and maternal health services warns infants who are rarely spoken to, receive limited physical affection and have little opportunity to play and explore their environment may not fully develop the brain connections and pathways needed to learn.

Child development experts said the chart and DVD Love, Talk, Sing, Read, Play was needed to show parents that "children learn best if they feel safe and loved."

Anne Manne's Quarterly Essay, Love and Money: The Family and the Free Market states that in a non-risk group around three-quarters of new mothers bond with their child. With this bonding usually comes the features of parenting that the NSW government feel they need to provide a (wall?) chart for. Therefore a priority grouping must be disadvantaged and marginalised families, who are overall less likely to use early years services such as MC&H centres. While the article indicates the kits are available in three different languages (only three?) there's no further information as to how they plan to target the information.

What's happening to play?

As I was nervously waiting for gym-based punishment during the week I was able to flick through the latest edition of Melbourne’s Child. Featured was an article justifying play-based curriculum in early childhood services. This surprised me because I thought the early childhood profession has done a stellar job over the years getting most interested parties to understand the benefits of play for early years education. Later that day I was reading a 2007 research paper by Andrew Gibbons who, like Ailwood in 2003, was using poststructural tools to deconstruct play and its dominance in early years curriculum. Specifically he was looking at the privileging of process as children's work in early childhood, rather than product-based outcomes. His central thesis was this:

“The emphasis on the normal child’s true play – their unpaid work –constructs a relationship between play, child and society that is not playful. Theorising play as work is a technique of social control and a means of transmitting assumptions and beliefs regarding the nature and purpose of childhood” (p. 303).

For a large part of this decade the question of play and its role in the curriculum has been troubled at a theoretical level, although still heavily supported at a service level. Play and its link to Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) and consequently Piagetian developmental psychology has been under siege by post-inspired ideas that have challenged the images and ideologies around childhood and children in Western society. Alternative theoretical informants such as sociocultural theory, which has taken the focus off ‘development’ per se and moved the lens to culturally infused pedagogy has solidified itself in research circles.

It seems somewhat ironic that as governments finally start to get the hang of play as children’s work and begin to use it in their rhetoric, the field starts to become disturbed by the assumptions inherent in it. What will be interesting from here on in is how this emerging theoretical complexity will play into the planning for Federal and Victorian state level curriculum frameworks that are currently underway.

Victoria is one of the only states left in Australia without a curriculum document for the early years and it’s long overdue. The field has always been divided over the question of having a formal curriculum with arguments against it driven by a fear of lost autonomy and concerns about a push-down curriculum from schools, which would invade the sacrosanct space for play. The lack of curriculum in Victoria so far has led to breathtaking diversity in early childhood programs, most of which attest to a play-based approach. The 2003 curriculum discussion paper was the last attempt at a field driven conversation about a formalised curriculum and the ideological diversity featured in that document suggests that the field had (has?) a way to go if they want to clearly articulate aims, goals and visions to the government.

If the government take on the theoretical challenges around play, it runs the risk of accusations of reneging on ‘play promises’ from many practitioners fiercely protective of play. However if these contestations around play are ignored how do we ensure that the new curriculum momentum is capitalised on by building documents that are relevant, cutting edge and theoretically rigorous?

References
Gibbons, A (2007) “The Politics of Processes and Products in Education: an early childhood metanarrative crisis?” Educational Philosophy and Theory, v.39, n.3

Ailwood, J (2003) “Governing Early Childhood Education through Play” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, v.4, n.3