"check against" delivery"
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to Early Childhood Australia’s biennial conference.
The theme for this conference is: "Children: A Nation’s Capital –investing in our children" and I’m pleased to be able to say this is exactly what we’re doing.
Before I go any further, I’d like to congratulate Early Childhood Australia on its 70th birthday—a milestone you’ll no doubt be celebrating at this conference. I commend you for the terrific work you’ve done over the years in promoting and advocating for the wellbeing of young children, and for your ongoing efforts to improve early childhood services.
I’d particularly like to thank Pam Cahir – a real crusader for the cause of better care and education for children.
2007 was a memorable year for me – not least because of my campaign for Bennelong. But I think one of the most arresting presentations given by anyone during that campaign was given by Pam Cahir. She presented as comprehensive a critique as I’ve heard about the deficiencies of the child care sector, and she didn’t shy away from any of the sensitive issues – qualifications, ratios, wages and career prospects – she just spelt it out as it is. And I think it’s incredibly helpful for all of us to have someone out there doing that.
As Parliamentary Secretary I’ve valued every one of my conversations with her, and Pam, I hope you can see that this Government is moving to address those issues you’ve been championing for some time now.
I’m sure you’d agree that children, the child care sector and the ECA, are in very good hands while ever Pam is out there calling us to account. Thank you Pam.
Well, what a week …..Global financial crisis aside, there’ve been quite a few significant developments these past days.
I must say I was particularly impressed with the recommendations of the Productivity Commission on paid parental leave. It’s a development that’s long overdue, and I think the report sets out a fairly comprehensive model which the Government will no doubt consider carefully when it’s deliberating about the type of scheme it will adopt.
One of the objectives behind the PC’s recommendation is of course, maternal and child health and welfare, and there’s no doubt we should do all we can do to assist during that very vulnerable time in an infant’s life.
But this role isn’t exclusively for government. The data tells us that mothers are returning to work in significant numbers while their babies are still quite young, so in my mind, business and employers most definitely have some responsibility too.
Employers have a fundamental role to play in creating a different kind of workplace and a more innovative employment model – one that accommodates working mothers and better suits families, whilst obviously satisfying the employer’s needs and expectations.
The employee-employer relationship is, after all, a two-way street.
On a lighter note, earlier this week I was thrilled to see that a female astronomer, Penny Sackett, was appointed Australia’s Chief Scientist.
Her appointment reminds me of a visit I made a month or so ago now to the Anglo-Australian Observatory at Marsfield, in the middle of my electorate.
The professional star-gazers there gave me a quick astronomy lesson and brought me up to date.
More than 200 planets revolve around the stars and the galaxies that make up the Universe originated approximately 13.7 billion years ago.
We know about this because a long time ago a bloke called Galileo Galilei looked directly at the sun through a telescope. No-one gave him an Olympic medal. On the contrary the Church made his life a misery, but in 2009, astronomers the world over will celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first astronomical observation.
At the Marsfield Observatory, Galileo’s 21st century children are from France, Canada, the UK, Poland and Russia. They are 20. They are 50. Highly gifted researchers, they are all drawn to the Marsfield site because of its reputation for innovation in optical astronomy.
These are people who reach for the stars every day – literally and metaphorically. They all tell much the same story, that once they looked through their first telescope they were hooked.
"After you’ve seen the rings of Saturn, that’s it. You know you’ll spend your life looking at stars."
Yes…… but where did that sense of wonder come from I ask?
My bet is there was something else going on when these researchers were very young.
Indeed, this is what all the international data into early childhood development tells us. That children learn more in the first five years of their lives than at any other comparable period.
Get it right in the early years and many more of our young people will be able to reach for the stars.
And that must surely be the challenge for all policy makers…. to ensure that the magic of Marsfield translates into every early learning centre and preschool in the country.
Policy Update
I hope you’d all agree that this is an exciting time for early childhood development in Australia.
And I can’t speak at a conference of early childhood professionals without acknowledging the changes at ABC Learning. Obviously the Government takes a close interest in the provision of child care, and we are continuing to monitor developments closely. I’m sure ABC will continue to work through the necessary processes and until it has done that it would be inappropriate to comment further.
I can assure you that the Rudd Government is committed to investing in our children’s early years, to ensure that each and every child has the support and the opportunities they need to realise their potential. And we want to do that by continuing to support what is in overall terms a robust sector.
I also know that you in the sector have a strong interest in our reform initiatives, and as you might have heard me say on other occasions, I believe that what we have here is a once in a decade opportunity to redesign a complex, flawed and inefficient system.
There’s plenty of evidence out there and it’s beyond dispute - good quality early childhood education and care is fundamental to ensuring a range of social, emotional, and educational outcomes for children. And the benefits are particularly significant for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
So what have we as a government been doing to help these past nine months or so?
Let me give you a bit of an update ….
Indigenous Early Childhood Development
On Thursday, COAG signed off on a $564 million of joint funding over six years to address the needs of Indigenous children in their early years. As part of the initiative, 35 Children and Family Centres are to be established across Australia to deliver integrated services that offer early learning, child care and family support programs. The funding will also increase access to ante-natal care, teenage reproductive and sexual health services, and child and maternal health services.
Universal Access - $10 million Initiative
As most people here today will know, the Rudd Government has committed to implementing universal access to 15 hours a week of affordable, quality early learning programs, delivered by a university-trained teacher, for all children in the year before formal school commences.
The Government will invest $533.5 million over the next five years to achieve this.
Earlier this year we called for funding submissions from the states and territories as a start on implementing this commitment.
And what pleased me most was that a number of the proposals we received directly addressed workforce development. They included:
Jointly funded scholarships with the Victorian Government to attract and mentor 25 early childhood teachers to take up employment for three years in long day care centres located in disadvantaged areas;
Providing around $650,000 to Queensland to support a professional development program for teaching English to Indigenous children living in remote communities; and
In Western Australia, contributing $400,000 to provide an innovative pathway for community members in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions to obtain a degree qualification in early childhood education.
And on universal access more generally, I’m delighted to report that the states are on board, and many are already taking steps to achieve the 15 hours.
Just a matter of weeks ago, the ACT Government and the Commonwealth reached agreement on Universal Access for children in the ACT over the next two years. In the ACT, government preschool students will have access to 15 hours of preschool by 2010.
260 Early Learning and Care Centres
We’ve also been working with state governments to find suitable locations for the first 38 of the 260 Early Learning and Care Centres. The first of those centres has been announced for Craigieburn in Victoria, and we’re currently in funding negotiations with several states for a number of further centres.
I’m confident an announcement on more centres is imminent.
Quality Framework Consultations
On quality, as you know, we are working towards implementing a national quality framework that encompasses a set of national standards, a ratings system, the Early Years Learning Framework and a streamlined regulatory mechanism.
In August and September a discussion paper on the proposed framework was tested in a series of public consultation sessions across the country.
I opened four of those sessions – in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Sydney - and I’d like to congratulate the various state ministers who opened those sessions with me, and thank them for their support. The development of the framework really does require a partnership between the Commonwealth and the states and, in this area, we have had considerable co-operation from all governments.
I must say, the response to the public forums has been very encouraging - over 2,500 people participated in 48 forums, another 265 people participated in focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, and around 350 written submissions were received.
Representation was terrific - parents, child care workers, community and private provider organisations, academics, unions, training providers and governments all attended.
As you would expect, participants expressed a diverse range of views, but there were some common themes and challenges.
One was that learning and care must be child-focussed. Sounds obvious enough, but clearly that’s not always the case.
Just on that, I wonder how many of you have been watching the fascinating documentary series that’s been screening on the ABC over the past couple of weeks?
Life at One delved in to stress in young children, including children in child care. And let me tell you - the notion of stress in very young children, their families and the child care workers who look after them is one we should all pay particular attention to.
Associate Professor Margaret Sims from Edith Cowen University appeared in that documentary and her work is sobering. Her research has studied stress levels in children and where children and employees feel rushed and pressured, higher cortisol levels are recorded. We know that continued stress for children means that they divert all their energies into dealing with it...thus inhibiting their capacity to develop and to learn.
Secure, calm children on the other hand, are more likely to be empathetic and in a position to be able to regulate their emotions.
And that is an important goal for us…..To ensure consistency in quality so that whether a child lives in Gympie or Ballarat or Fremantle, that child will experience calm, secure and stimulating care – the type that will ensure he or she makes a happy transition to school.
In the forums and focus groups, parents and families told us that, when they think of ‘quality’ in early childhood education and care, they think the development of positive, supportive relationships between their children, their carers/teachers and parents and the physical safety of their children.
And there was almost universal agreement that better child-to-staff ratios are required to improve service quality, but also recognition that this has workforce and cost implications that need to be looked at closely before adjustments are made.
Our long term goal should be to improve staff-child ratios. Reform in this area, along with improved staff qualifications, the co-location of centres on school sites and universal access in the year before school, are all about providing parents, children and the staff who work with them, a positive early childhood experience. However, I do understand the sector’s concerns about reform in this area, and these concerns will be taken into account in formulating the national standards.
The Government understands that quality has a cost and that is why we are investing around $2.4 billion over 5 years to ensure quality does not have to come at the expense of affordability for parents.
The concept of an early years learning framework also attracted a great deal of interest at the forums, along with some uncertainty around what is actually intended.
There was wholesale agreement to the concept of a framework that captures the importance and philosophy behind early years learning, and recognises the social and emotional development of children.
There was also general consensus that structured learning can and should take place across all early childhood settings, but that this must be play-based learning.
There was overwhelming support in all the consultation sessions for a streamlined and consistent national regulatory framework, with a single regulatory body covering all service settings.
Not surprisingly, this was accompanied by a strong desire to reduce the administrative requirements placed on services.
The preference was to replace the model of a single validator arriving to give a static assessment of a service, with a mentor/advisory approach, building a relationship that fosters improvement in quality. And I wholeheartedly support that.
Now, there was also some interesting discussion around the ratings system.
While there was mixed support for a ratings system, there was extensive discussion on what that system might look like and how it might function.
I think most agreed that there needs to be a capacity for services to aspire to excellence, and to receive recognition for that excellence. There also needs to be some means whereby services that are not operating to their potential can be encouraged and supported to make the necessary improvements.
The COAG Productivity Agenda Working Group is currently working through the all the feedback we’ve received, and is using it to develop the draft National Quality Framework. I expect this to be available later this year and there will be more consultation after its release.
Workforce
Not surprisingly, at all the consultation sessions participants told us that the work of early childhood carers and educators is not properly recognised and the profession doesn’t enjoy the status it deserves.
Well, we are working on remedying this, because without a well-trained and well-respected workforce we will struggle to deliver on our promises to reform the early years.
Let me give you some statistics……The data on the early childhood workforce is patchy, but we do know there are about 19,000 early childhood teachers and around 90,000 workers in child care services Australia-wide.
The latest figures, which were from 2006, tell us that nationally, only seven per cent of early childhood workers in long day care centres hold a bachelor degree or higher qualification in early childhood, and 39% of the early childhood workforce in long day care centres has no formal child care qualifications at all.
Research also shows that the mismatch between workers’ status and wages, compared with the high levels of responsibility and workload demands, continues to be a critical factor in the lack of suitably qualified child care workers.
I’m aware that low pay and limited career paths are widely seen as contributing to serious levels of turnover in the child care sector and these issues must be addressed in the longer term.
In fact, the 2006 National Children’s Services Workforce Study estimates that, without intervention, these dynamics will ultimately lead to an estimated shortfall of at least 7,000 workers in the sector by 2013.
Clearly, attracting new child care workers and teachers to the sector and retaining them will provide stability and consistency for children – and that’s particularly important in creating the right kind of environment for the development of a healthy and happy child.
But while I acknowledge it’s important to increase the supply of early childhood workers, what you can deduce from the numbers is that we currently have an underqualified workforce in early childhood services.
As I’ve said before, there are many, many passionate and committed child care workers currently in the sector who have no formal qualifications but are marvellous at their jobs, and invaluable assets to their employers.
We need to keep them, but we do need to encourage them to enhance their training and qualifications if we are to raise standards overall, and the status of the profession as a whole.
And to help do that, we have several initiatives underway.
On Thursday the Deputy Prime Minister announced 500 new Commonwealth supported higher education places for early childhood educators in 2009, with a further 500 places for each of 2010 and 2011.
These places were allocated to 22 institutions in various states, and they will be spread across a mix of courses supporting different educational pathways.
For example, Charles Sturt University currently has 800 students with TAFE qualifications studying their early childhood education degrees by distance. 30% of those students have indicated they are prepared to undertake an additional year of study to complete a four year degree, as opposed to the three year bachelor degree. Charles Sturt will use the 35 places it was allocated for those students wishing to do the extra year.
As well as receiving 20 of the Commonwealth supported places, Macquarie University has also been able to report that its mid-year enrolments are up over the course of the last 12 months. In 2007 there were 49 mid-year enrolments in its Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood), but in 2008 there’s been 75…so perhaps the message is getting through!
And for those workers I just mentioned who have no qualifications but are looking to undertake some formal training, we’re removing TAFE fees for child care diplomas and advanced diplomas, starting next year.
This measure is funded by the Commonwealth and will be managed by the states as they have direct responsibility for their TAFE institutes. We are currently negotiating funding agreements with them, and we hope to have those agreements in place shortly, because we know TAFEs are beginning to enrol students for 2009.
Let me be clear about this……this program is a direct subsidy for employers. And for child care workers, the initiative is likely to mean a higher salary. For example, based on current award rates, an unqualified child care worker in Victoria would receive up to $200 a week more if she were to become diploma qualified.
Finally, this year’s budget allocated funding to reduce the HECS debts for early childhood teachers working in areas of high disadvantage.
And remember, this initiative is NOT just for new graduates. ALL teachers with a HECS debt are eligible, provided they teach in a designated region.
And it really is something to consider seriously. Eligible teachers will receive up to $1,600 of debt relief each year for 5 years – a total benefit of $8,000.
The eligibility guidelines are currently being drafted by the Department and will be tabled in the Parliament later this year.
We do recognise that the early childhood sector has a diverse workforce, and that we need to professionalise all of it. We need this to happen for our ambitious reform agenda to work. And we need it to happen in ways that do not place an unreasonable cost burden on families already struggling.
Conclusion
Let me assure you, governments at all levels are keen to work with you to get these reforms right, and deliver the early childhood experiences children deserve.
But this is another one of those two-way street situations I referred to earlier. The sector must also come together to work with each other, and with governments and families, if it’s to satisfy its obligations to the people using the services.
Recently I received a terrific piece of feedback from a member of the Expert Advisory Panel. The Panel was convened to advise the Early Childhood Development subgroup on the quality reform agenda, and it comprised academics, practitioners and representatives from community and private providers.
She told me: "In the process we have built and expanded our professional networks and friendships [and] that will continue to inform our work and our practice well into the future."
This sort of working relationship is what I would like to see throughout the industry. We all have much to learn and much to contribute, and smart operators are already working in partnership with others in ways that will benefit the children in their care.
I realise I’ve been talking about the "sector" and the "industry" today….and I was pulled up for that on Thursday, by an early childhood teacher at a child care forum in Penrith. She told me that people are always referring to the "sector", when in fact, she preferred people refer to the "profession". And she’s right. We should all take a lead in raising the status of the early childhood profession.
Governments are working hard to shift the focus of public debate from a debate just about the cost of child care to one that includes the quality of child care. Similarly, I’d like to see operators working together, putting aside the artificial distinctions between the community sector on the one hand, and corporate or private providers on the other.
After all, children are at the centre of this for all of us.
And with more Australian children in formal care than ever before, ours is a significant task. To ensure that when Mum and Dad are not around, children enjoy calm, consistent quality care, so they will enter school as happy, secure, and socially competent youngsters.
Surely there’s no greater reward?
If we get that right, it could be you who that three year old remembers when, in years to come, she picks up the 2025 Eureka Prize in optical astronomy and joins Galileo’s descendents at Marsfield.
Thank you.