Extracted, Separated AND Commodified: How can the ECEC sector stay united?

Do you feel like the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector is more divided than ever lately? Are you feeling proud to work in a not-for-profit service or a little defensive and wary of mentioning you work for a for-profit service? Are you questioning the value of your work in a sector under severe scrutiny? Wondering how there can be such disparity in levels of care and professionalism in a sector that has state regulators and a national quality assurance system?  

 

When the ECEC sector comes into the spotlight, it is our professional identity that takes another hit. The frustration felt by those in the ECEC sector who are provisioning outstanding education and care is familiar. Social media responses within the sector have recently been reactive and divisive, with people turning on each other like crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down to defend their place and worth that is not reflected in the broken system that we presently exist in. 

 

This article aims to explain the economic and political system that ECEC exists within. We need to understand this system well to be able to decide how we respond to the situations taking place. When it is understood, I believe it feels less personal and more systemically unethical and problematic. Most importantly, when we understand the muddy waters we are swimming in, we can feel empowered to make sound professional choices. 

 

Let’s start at the beginning….

 

The Australian ECEC sector, like many other countries, is grounded in the objectives of providing quality ECEC to promote positive economic and social outcomes for working families, including better health, education and employment outcomes (ACECQA,2021; Tayler, 2011). We are also influenced by major global and economic organisations such as the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). This globalised economic approach to the ECEC sector stems from countries, like ours, adopting neoliberal policy advice from the OECD and the World Bank in response to the marketisation of the ECEC sector (Hunkin, 2019; Moss, 2009).  

 

Therefore, the stakeholders of the Australian ECEC sector knowingly participate in the commodification of care through the marketplace of ECEC. Capitalism is the economic water that we swim in every day. It is such a normalised economic grand narrative that we accept it as part of everyday life, many of us, without question. Economic policy is what drives the ECEC sector. Whilst affordability and accessibility is crucial for families, over time it has created a focus on providing a quantity of care over considered quality of care. To compensate for the risks this presents, a quality assurance system is in place.  More on that later.

 

Capitalism needs competition to prosper. It needs a marketplace where products can compete, stand out and be sold. This happens when there is extraction, separation and commodification to make products more marketable.

 

Let’s think about how this happens within the ECEC marketplace.

 

Extraction

 

Capitalist extraction economy describes the system where resources and money are extracted from either the environment or people in the pursuit of profit. Often, when profit is the main focus, there is little reinvestment of profits back to the origin point of the extraction. Sound familiar?

 

It is clear that often large corporate Australian and multinational private equity chains of ECEC providers are extracting huge profits at the expense of their communities with little positive outcomes representing any reinvestment. This has crystallised in the recent Four Corners expose into the ECEC sector and the continued reporting of abuse and harm by Greens MP Abigail Boyd, who is chairing a Parliamentary review into the NSW ECEC sector.

 

Now, full disclosure, I have been the Approved Provider of a small private ECEC centre since 2005. Therefore, as the business structure is a partnership, my husband and I extract profit from that business. The difference between the corporate ECEC sector and other small operators in the sector is the amount of profit we extract and what is done with those profits. 

 

There are no rules for spending business profits, but research shows that the more profits are reinvested back into the business, the better the quality of the service. The lack of governance on who and how many centres can be owned by different business structures, needs significant political and ethical consideration. 

 

Finally, the most significant extraction in this system is our labour. The caring labour of mostly women at low cost is extracted to be used to provide a workforce to produce the service to stimulate profit. 

 

Separation

 

To make money in a market, goods and products need to be separated to create their own supply needs. This happens within the ECEC sector in a few different ways. Early childhood teachers in the ECEC sector are separated from the government provision of early childhood teachers in schools and preschools, even though they hold the same qualifications covering birth to 8 years. Why the separation? So, there is a separate market in the ECEC sector that creates a different stream of income from the same product. 

 

This also explains why there is encouragement and financial incentive for both for profit and not for profit service delivery in the ECEC sector. It simply creates more economic stimulation under the guise of policy to support families.  So, for example, cheaper child care…. who is that good for and who does it serve – the children, the staff, the families? It serves to stimulate the economic market. 

 

Lastly, to support the completion of the capitalist cycle there needs to be a product to sell.  What do we have available to commodify? The answer is children, care and quality.

 

Commodification

 

The privatisation of the ECEC sector has created the opportunity for children, care and quality to serve as goods and services to sell in the ECEC market place. Children were once described by Eddy Groves as “units of sale” in an interview in 2008. Multiply units of sale many times and you have lots to sell. Ipso facto – the corporatised for profit ECEC sector! 

 

The education and care we provide is the product that families buy which is ranked by quality ratings. You know those quality star rating charts we must display in our service entry ways to ‘help families’? As we all know, the quality rating system is mandated under the National Quality Framework. All approved services must be measured against the National Quality Standard.  This process ranks services to commodify and create marketable products. We need to justify our worth through quality outcomes and produce learners ready for school.  

 

There are of course other players in the ECEC sector who also make profit from the ECEC marketplace. These include consultants, peak bodies, unions, government departments, regulators, industrial and employment relation advisors, registered training organisations, landlords, tech companies, suppliers, builders, architects, accountants, councils etc.  They all have a vested interest in the economic success of the ECEC sector.  

 

Let’s be real, we ALL should have a vested interest in the economic success of the ECEC sector. Whether for profit or not for profit, any business needs to make a profit to provision its service, pay its wages, salaries and overheads. The ECEC sector and all its stakeholders exist within a neoliberal political discourse. Whether you work in a for profit or not for profit service, there is investment in human capital. All parts of how this system is managed and or manipulated needs careful, ethical consideration at all times. 

 

So, what? What now? When there is clear evidence that the most vulnerable within this system are suffering, we must accept the evidence and make change happen. We must also advocate for how this change occurs and where the critical response is directed. Those providers and educators who have been reported due to serious breaches of regulations should be removed from the sector for good. 

 

However, careful review of the regulatory and quality assurance system needs to also happen in haste. Quality in the current system is about high returns on investment and the marketisation of our work. The discourse of quality has become a loud voice that is so normalised that we accept it and all its demands. It has become a powerfully invisible truth that is not protecting or supporting children, families or the workforce. 

 

There is a low trust approach to policy regarding the ECEC workforce that frames educators as risking the wellbeing of children if their centre is not ‘quality’. This is a dangerously thin edge to rest the safety and wellbeing of children on. The quality system is failing at both ends of the spectrum. The ‘working towards’ acceptance levels are not given enough attention and the ‘exceeding to excellent’ levels are taking too much energy and money with not enough valuable return to sustain the workforce that we have left. 

 

Dear ECEC colleagues

 

We can’t let this broken economic and political system divide us. Regardless of the business structure that employs you, WE hold the qualifications, the complex practice knowledge, the professionality, the technical skills, the practical wisdom, the care, contextualism and compassion…not the system.  

 

WE are the individuals who are straddling tasks ranging from classroom supply ordering to mentoring and guiding teams, administering large sums of tax payers’ money through enrolment and financial acquitting system. 

 

WE are staffing, remunerating, negotiating, training and embedding regulations and quality outcomes. WE are designing curriculum, writing documentation, assessing learning, partnering with families, and building relationships. 

 

WE are the capable and competent adults shaping the capable and competent children in our charge. WE are doing all of this well everyday despite the broken system that does not have the wellbeing of children or staff as its focus. 

 

WE are the quality stars!