The system has several elements and many problems. Making it fit for purpose will take a lot of work and even more resources than those that have just been announced.
Research confirms that a focus on restoring the well-being of educators is vital to deliver the gains promised by huge new investments in early childhood learning and care.
The two biggest states have jointly committed to a huge investment in early childhood education and learning over the next decade. But delivering high-quality universal preschool access won’t be easy.
Marilyn Campbell, Queensland University of Technology and Yan Qi, Queensland University of Technology
This week’s announcements will add to the need to train more early childhood workers and to ensure they are more diverse in a way that better reflects our multicultural society.
Cutting the cost of childcare for families won’t help them if there are no places available at local childcare centres or people to staff them.
Kindergarten teachers were tasked with adapting a hands-on, play-based curricula in a virtual environment – a nearly impossible task even without parenting one’s own children at the same time.
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Kindergarten educators who taught from home during COVID-19 and who were primarily responsible for their own children self-reported poorer mental health than those without these responsibilities.
Almost as many trained early childhood educators work outside licensed child care as in it. Many say they would return to the field if offered decent work.
(Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages)
Staff recruitment and retention challenges aren’t seen in public child-care centres, where educators are paid substantially more, are unionized and have professional development opportunities.
The pandemic highlighted Australia’s reliance on early childhood educators, while adding to their existing stresses. A study of how educators fared identifies three key factors in their well-being.
They’re among the lowest-paid in the country but are working many hours unpaid to meet the demands of accreditation. With 73% wanting to leave the profession in the next three years, change is needed.
In expanding early learning and care, Canada must addresses a current crisis is retaining and recruiting educators.
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Beyond addressing key staffing issues, developing high-quality early childhood programs must involve using school boards to expand access and grow spaces while offering more affordable fees.
There’s a lot caregivers can do to ensure that young children keep learning.
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Choosing child care when returning to paid work can be hard and to the uninitiated the terms can be confusing. One alternative to long day care in a larger centre is known as family day care.
In 2009, Australian governments made an agreement to provide all four-year-olds with access to preschool delivered by a trained teacher from 2013. We’re a long way from this goal.
Paternity leave can increase fathers’ involvement in families, with positive impacts on children, fathers and the co-parent.
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Adjunct Professor, Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for the Study of Education (OISE) and Senior Policy Fellow at the Atkinson Centre, University of Toronto