10/12/2015
The need for early childhood education is being undervalued.
LAST week desperate parents blew the whistle on Victoria's kindergarten secret: there aren't enough places to go around and children are missing out.
Many reasons for the crisis have been offered, including a baby boom and past government funding policies. But there's a bigger reason no one wants to mention: kindergartens are being squeezed out by childcare.
The fact is, kindergarten is considered to be out of fashion by policymakers who think it is attended by the children of either elite yummy-mummy types who spend all day on the tennis court, lazy unmotivated parents who aren't willing to get a real job, or hippy drop-outs.
''Who else could possibly take their child to a session that runs for fewer hours than an adult's working day?'' is a question I hear regularly. And yet we can see from the article ''Kindergartens bursting at the seams'' (Age, 13/10) that not only do many everyday parents think they can manage this near impossible feat, but more parents are demanding kindergarten places for their children than there are government-funded places available.
The policymakers' solution is to get kindergarten teachers into the childcare room for a specified number of hours per week. This way, they argue, all children will receive a ''quality early childhood education''.
Childcare is rapidly becoming the government-sanctioned provider of all early childhood services, and kindergarten is slowly being swallowed up.
This involves an enormous risk, because childcare centres find it difficult to attract the best kindergarten teachers, which means many children will potentially be getting their early education from institutions whose main purpose is to care for 0-to-5-year-olds whose parents want to outsource their care, not provide education. It's a cheap, lowest-common-denominator solution that will fail our children.
Parents manage their children's care in different ways and it's time that policymakers realised that not all working parents are dual-full-time professional power couples. At my children's kindergarten, children are picked up and dropped off by mothers, fathers, grandparents and friends. Some work from home, many part time, and others are taking a career break during their children's precious preschool years. We also know that some parents work full time or are sole parents and that some children are ready to attend for longer hours, so we offer a long-day kindergarten program with full-time hours.
Policymakers are out of touch with what parents want for their children. The demand for places in stand-alone kindergartens is high because many parents want their 3 and 4-year-olds educated in institutions whose sole purpose is education. Kindergarten teachers understand the unique needs of children who are no longer babies or toddlers but who are not yet ready for school.
A child's kindergarten year is one they uniquely enjoy for the freedom it provides as they follow their own interests and explore their creativity under the guidance of tertiary-educated professionals.
Early childhood education is what kindergartens do best but sadly ''early childhood education'' has become a euphemism for something else. At the 85-year-old Lady Forster Kindergarten in Port Melbourne, we are paying the price for poor public policy implemented in its most clumsy form. We are a thriving kindergarten with a healthy bank balance and active parents, but earlier this year our land was compulsorily acquired by the City of Port Phillip with the assistance of the Victorian Government to ''integrate'' us with a local childcare centre against our will.
The extra money is going into new buildings but not new teachers, and new childcare places but not new kindergarten places. The potential for our kindergarten to grow has been taken away to expand childcare. Government officials tell us ''it's for the good of the majority'', but it's really about providing a cheaper, diminished service.
This year I've heard so many kindergarten parents, teachers and academics speak with great fondness, nostalgia, sadness and resignation about what's happening to kindergartens. We know it's the best form of early childhood education available but we feel powerless to stop its decline. It's heartening to hear parents finding their voice - but this must only be the beginning not the end of the fight.
Politicians, public servants and journalists have swallowed the insatiable childcare lobby's spin without question. No one is asking for evidence of the supposed limitless unmet demand for childcare places we hear so much about. Why is it, for instance, that after many years compiling a centralised childcare waiting list, the City of Port Phillip now refuses to release the final data? Could it be because it doesn't bear out the inflated claims being made about the lack of places?
By all means give more money to childcare, but huge sums of public money are at stake and there must be proper accountability.
By contrast, kindergartens have suffered from a weaker staff union and a less politically motivated lobby group. This has allowed a new form of group-think to dominate public debate and place childcare at the centre of early childhood education.
It's time policymakers listened to all parents and took another look at kindergarten.
Fiona Hehir is president of Lady Forster Kindergarten in Port Melbourne.
Geoff Strong's column will appear tomorrow.
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