Gold Not Glue: What it might take to start to repair early childhood education

There is a Japanese art form called Kintsugi. It means ‘golden joinery’ and refers to the practice of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. It is a beautiful way of breathing new life into broken objects. Kintsugi does not hide the cracks, and it does not pretend the break never happened, because it did. What it does do is make the fracture visible, important even, because it becomes part of the story.

I have found myself returning to this idea recently, as I think about the current state of turmoil that the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector is experiencing. The sector, in its present state, is not beyond repair but is undeniably fractured.

Staffing shortages have become normalised, staff burnout is endemic and this essential work of raising and educating our youngest citizens is undervalued, underpaid and in crisis.

Every crack tells a story. This is a story of care and professionalism held past breaking point, of educators staying when leaving would have been easier, and of children being educated and cared for with creativity, patience, joy and skill in the most difficult conditions.

But here is where I want to press pause.

Because Kintsugi is not just about the cracks. It is also about the repair, and the responsibility for this repair cannot rest with the sector alone. The early childhood sector did not arrive at this crisis because educators failed. We arrived here because of decades of systemic neglect, policy decisions that prioritised profit over people, convenience over quality, short-term saving over long term investment and a lean towards neoliberalism that has had a damaging impact on the early childhood sector with its focus on curriculum and future readying children as investments in future economic growth. 

While educators have carried the weight of this broken system for too long, it is not their burden alone to fix. Repair is a collective act.

It belongs to governments who must fund early childhood education as a public good, not a private luxury.

It belongs to communities who must advocate for the educators who care and educate their children.

It belongs to employers who must create workplaces where people can thrive, not merely survive.

It belongs to all of us, parents, policymakers and citizens, because the wellbeing of young children is the foundation of every healthy society.

In Kintsugi, the cracks are filled with gold — not glue. Gold signifies value, worth, respect. In Kintsugi the broken object is not glued back together quickly or invisibly but rather repaired with gold. Gold is not decoration but rather a symbol of worth so the question we need to ask ourselves is “what is the gold we are willing to invest in early childhood education”?

For me it is:

• wages that reflect professional value professional respect.
• paid time for reflection, documentation, and learning.
• ratios that allow for genuine and sustained education and care. environments built for joy and curiosity — not stress and compliance.

Kintsugi teaches us that what is broken can become functional, even beautiful again, not despite the cracks, but because of them. Imagine a future where early childhood education bears the marks of this current crisis — not as scars of defeat, but as evidence of resilience, care, transformation and professional rage.

It is not enough however for your service to be okay while others are struggling. Early childhood education doesn’t belong to one service, one suburb, one family – it belongs to all of us. The service down the road, the one losing staff, struggling to offer quality, not meeting quality standards – that’s your responsibility too.

If it breaks anywhere, it breaks everywhere. This repair work cannot be an isolated effort.

We will only get there if we commit together to the slow, patient work of repair and not with empty slogans and quick fixes. What is broken is not accidental, it is the results of systems and choices, however this work of raising children, building communities, shaping futures — has always been precious.

It is time we ALL treated it that way.