We need to focus on quality
RECENT reports about findings of a investigation by RTÉ of poor practice in some of our child care services have renewed the public discussion about Ireland’s early childhood care and education practices.
The response of the identified services, industry representatives, and the Government has been somewhat knee jerk and self serving. The focus of attention should be the quality provision for our children.
While the “revelations” were upsetting, they were not surprising to most of those who are familiar with this area of policy and practice.
It has been well known for many years that we were lagging comparative countries in terms of provision and particularly quality of early childhood care and education.
Many of the responses to the recent revelations referred to recent research evidence. In fact the research evidence is not new at all and has been available to Government for many years.
Ready to Learn — A White Paper on Early Childhood Education was published by the Government in 1999. In his foreword the then minister for education and science said: “High-quality early education can make the crucial difference in helping each child develop to their full potential. In recognition of this, the Government included a clear commitment to early childhood education” and: “implementation of the White Paper proposals will ensure that quality becomes and remains the hallmark of early childhood education”.
Since then some progress has been made. A national quality framework for early childhood care and education, Síolta, was developed by the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education and launched by the then children’s minister, Brian Lenihan, in 2006.
Soon afterwards (2009), an early years curriculum, Aistear, was published by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.
Both documents were designed to work well together. Irish and international responses to these frameworks have been uniformly positive.
In 2009, the Government made a momentous decision: A universal pre-school year was introduced (financed by a portion of cash benefits to parents of young children). For the first time policy shifted from conceiving childcare as a service to working mothers to a service for children. It didn’t matter anymore whether a mother was working or not, the development and learning of young children were now a priority.
However, implementation of these policies has been timid and slow. My own experience working with and as a civil servant has been that there is an expectation in government that it is enough to tell people what to do, and it will happen.
The reality is that capacity has to be built and resourced. Commitments have to be translated to timetables and transparent responsibilities. It is important to note, amid the current handwringing that government has increased staff child ratios from Sept 2012 and reduced grants for the universal preschool year.
Immediate reactions by government, industry sources and the media to the revelations provided by RTÉ included a call for publication of inspection reports, more rigorous regulations, more frequent inspections and better qualified staff.
Online publication of inspection reports was promised for 2007 but never implemented, most likely for legal and commercial concerns. Frances Fitzgerald, the minister for children, has now promised publication within weeks.
More regulations and unannounced inspections are fine but will only set up more services for failure more frequently unless the quality of practice is addressed at the same time.
SO, what can be done now? More frequent inspections are fine but expensive and will not necessarily lead to better practice. Inspections of childcare services are actually much more frequent and arguably more rigorous than inspections of primary schools.
Better regulations are also only aspirational unless better practice is supported and quality of practice becomes the norm.
Last November, the Department of Children commissioned me to research and draft a paper in support of the emerging early childhood strategy. I wrote in that paper: “There is now abundant and consistent evidence from studies across the world that the outcomes for children and society at large are directly related to the level of quality of service provision. There is some evidence that low quality provision may even damage children.” I further advised that “… care should be taken to proceed at a pace which does not compromise quality”.
The clear indication from research and Government policy is to invest in quality provision. This raises the question what constitutes quality? Definitions vary, but feature many of the following characteristics:
*A highly qualified workforce;
*Practitioners are well paid and have ongoing professional development opportunities (which results in low staff turnover);
*Smaller teacher/child ratios;
*A professionally developed pre-school curriculum;
*Interventions with family units such as supportive home visits;
*Monitoring and site visits by either government or accrediting agency;
We have to address and meet these issues or we will again encounter revelations of bad practice.
*Heino Schonfeld is a childcare consultant, running his own company, Leitmotiv. As the former director of the Centre for Early Childhood Development and Education, he helped draw up Síolta.
