The Federal Government was recently advised that child care costs should increase. The increase will mostly be for increased carer training: all carers will have to be TAFE or university trained. It will also cover stricter standards, and lower child-carer ratios.
This is the most wrong-headed, brain-addled advice that could possibly be given to the government on the topic of child care, and yet the minister Kate Ellis, is all ears. I guess for some people, there’s no such thing as too much regulation.
Let’s start with carer training. The current law stipulates that there has to be a qualified early-learning professional present in any pre-school or child care centre. Other people working there don’t need any such training. This seems like a reasonable balance. But let’s imagine what’s being advocated. Before anyone can work with toddlers, they will have to spend years of their life in classrooms, listening to lecturers talk about looking after toddlers. Professors pointing to diagrams of toddlers on a screen in a darkened room, droning endlessly about Piagetian theory and signs of developmental problems. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. Then one day, they will emerge into the light and be allowed to work in a child care centre.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the question of how boring those courses will be – although mark my words, they will be excruciatingly boring – and instead focus on the social benefits. Sure, there is plenty to know about kids, and it’s probably true that someone who attends a university course on early childhood will have an in-depth understanding of child development. But what is being suggested here is not voluntary learning- it’s that everyone who sets foot in a child care centre must attend such a course. I have doubts that this policy was developed by people with children, because they would surely have realised that no amount of training can really teach you how to deal with small kids.
It’s something that either comes naturally or it doesn’t. No amount of training is going to compensate for an inability to relate to children. In fact it will have the reverse effect. People who are hopeless with kids will be legitimised by a qualification, and it will be much harder to remove them from the system. There will also be a smaller pool of replacements for poor performers. In short, it will restrict the labor market for child care workers and therefore reduce quality.
The authors of the report noted that children learn the most in the first five years of their lives. Therefore, their logic goes, we must teach them as much as possible.
This is broken logic.
It’s true that children learn a great deal in the early years, but the things they are learning are not the stuff of classrooms as such. They’re learning how to see in three dimensions; how to walk; how to talk; how to trick adults into giving you what you want. They need people who care about children and who are prepared to hang around, change their nappies, feed them, and make sure they don’t swallow small objects. If we need to send people to university to learn that, then we’ve gone a far way down the slide of social decay.
Everyone cares about children being well looked after and not neglected. But the current report seems more motivated by the desire to create a nation of academic super-achievers than making sure that our kids are safe, healthy, and in good hands. The child care industry needs to be able to offer a range of services, for parents who want their child to be in accelerated learning programs to parents who simply want their child to have someone to look after them, feed them, and keep them entertained.
The government wants to fix a non-existent problem. There is no widespread (or even narrowspread) concern about the current quality of child care in Australia. But if quality of care is the issue, then monitoring centers for infractions or substandard care is the answer, not burying them in red tape of compliance and accreditation. The real problem that parents are concerned about is that child care is too expensive, and these “improvments” make it even more expensive.
It’s possible to smother the life out of any industry with excessive government regulation. Child care is no different.
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As a father, will I now need to go to TAFE to learn how to look after my youngsters? As I type this, I have one under my feet (playing with a truck and a power cable – unplugged) and the other is doing letters at his desk. They are both learning in their own good time – I interact with them as required, but otherwise, they are just getting on with exploring their world and practicing newly acquired skills.
My 20-month old granddaughter is learning at an amazing rate…just like her mama did. But no over-educated product of the educational system is going to know that she likes cheese for breakfast, and prefers watermelon to pineapple. And loves to tweak the porky cat’s tail.
Elitism strikes again. *sigh*
This is more about controlling access to the child than what’s good for the child.
I notice that there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of news about how the family daycare workers will deal with this, but I suspect that they’ll be compelled to go to Tafe or uni as well.
Not a good idea from a parenting standpoint, as my girl was in family daycare for a couple of years before school. She thrived there.
Of the two ladies she stayed with, one quit due to the red tape that just got harder and harder to deal with, and the other was struggling with the bureacratic dictators.
We’re talking about a woman being told that she has to provide a sand pit inside her rumpus room for the little tackers in case of rain (she compromised and put one of those shell things with some sand out the back which could be dragged into the garage).
We’re talking carers being told to effectively set up classrooms in their own home, and provide a learning curriculum with goals and key targets to be met.
We’re talking a woman who was told what notices and paperwork she was allowed to stick up on her wall, in her own home.
I suspect we’ll see an exodus from the ranks of family day carers and a swelling of places required for child care centres.
There’s a reason so many call them kiddy jails.
Warehouses, Nilk, that’s what I called ‘em. Lovely Daughter was in a home child care in Maine that was loving and fun – and she thrived there. I have had young’uns in my home as well, but only one at a time, usually – because then I didn’t have to be licensed or inspected. I think the limit for that here, now, is 3 children, but you just know it’s going to change. Not for the better interest and health of the children, either.
I keep the granddaughter because it’s easiest and least expensive, I get about a fifth of what it would cost in a regular child-care. The Pixie has had 2 colds and 2 little touches of flu in her 21 months. Her cousin, who was in a warehouse for a year, had a cold & flu every week, and ended up with stents in his ears to deal with ear infections.
How that can possibly be good for a young’un, I just don’t understand. I sure am glad we can all deal with it here ourselves, it is truly a gift from G-d to have her in my life every day.
Both our wee tackers are in family day care. They love it. Our Council has recently put a Nazi in charge of the day care program, and the number of carers has halved. I hope ours hangs on until our kids are at pre-school! She is great.
I don’t expect her to teach them how to read and write – that is our job, and her kids range from 6 months to 4 years. You can’t run a class when the spread of kids is that much. I’m happy if they do “chop-chop” (cutting things with scissors), painting, play-dough, solving puzzles, doing jigsaws, bashing things with hammers, dancing to the Wiggles, chasing the cat, making mudcakes in the sand pit and visiting the park for an hour or two per day when the weather is good for a run around and kick of the ball.
The main thing they are getting out of it is being socialised with other kids – sitting at the table together to eat their meals, respecting other kids and their stuff and working co-operatively. They have a good routine, and can’t wait to leave the house in the morning to “go to work” as Monkey calls it.
I dread the day that Big Brother wants these carers to get a degree. That will be the end of the best childcare option that we have.