Early childhood services ‘just babysitters’ with many failing standards in NSW
Early childcare centres in NSW are failing to meet quality standards with one expert saying many across Australia are little more than “babysitting”.
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Exclusive: Early childhood education is such a lottery that one in five services are not meeting quality standards and one expert says many childcare centres are just “babysitting” children.
Former chair of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Advisory Authority (ACARA) Professor Steven Schwartz said Australia’s recent dismal literacy and numeracy results in an OECD PISA report were a “national call to action”.
Education is the worst performing of all categories in childcare and Professor Schwartz
said the curriculum is fractured and letting children down.
His comments come as data from nation’s childcare accreditation watchdog, Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) found:
• 21 per cent of services are not meeting overall quality standards;
• 15 per cent are falling at the ‘educational program and practice’ category, the largest number of failures in the seven quality area ratings;
• Western Australia has 25 per cent of services still “working towards” meeting national quality standards in the education quality area;
• Northern Territory has 24 per cent, NSW and Tasmania have 19 per cent while South Australia has 13 per cent, Queensland 12 per cent and Victoria 11 per cent.
Professor Schwartz, also former Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney, added: “Advances in teaching strategies and curriculum design are uneven and somewhat ad hoc. “This means that it can be something of a lottery for any child, depending on the school – or even the classroom – in which they find themselves.”
Professor Schwartz is on the board of Mindchamps, one of the largest providers in Singapore that is now making inroads in Australia, which claims to install a “champion mindset” through a strict curriculum based on neuroscience, psychology, theatre and education.
Neuroscientist Professor Allan Snyder, Director of the Centre for Mind at the University of Sydney, has helped develop the curriculum and said the developing brain benefits from having sensory, motor, intellectual, linguistic, emotional and social aspects of the mind stimulated simultaneously.
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Professor Synder has worked with Olympians and said that the “champion mindset” can be learned, particularly in key early years.
“These years are critical in the establishment of foundations upon which future behaviours and skills – and, particularly, mindsets – are built,” he said.
Mindchamps CEO David Chiem said Singapore has a more rigorous early childhood education curriculum.
“It is this, not age, or even technology, that gives children a head start. A strong emphasis is placed on developing literacy and numeracy skills at an early age. This is key, because statistically children who show an advantage in literacy and numeracy in early Primary tend to maintain that advantage throughout their school years.
“People outside of Singapore like to accuse the whole system of a ‘drill and kill’ approach, and while this may be true of some centres, there is actually a wide range of strategies employed.”
Early Childhood Australia’s Dr Kate Highfield said claiming childcare is just babysitting is highly offensive and undermines the opportunities available to children in quality services.
“We have made enormous gains in recognising quality and achieving quality, we have come a long way,” she said.
“We need all care provision to be high quality, and many of them are, and we need to make sure that is supported to be a national approach.”
Experts say significant workforce shortages are a threat to the future of quality childcare and that Australia will have to rely on skilled migration.
Australian Catholic University, Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education’s Professor Joce Nuttal said tens of thousands of early childhood educators will be needed in the next three years and they are working hard with centres to lift quality, particularly in regards to meeting education curriculum standards.
“There is a lot of churn of educators,” she said, adding that most centres don’t have the time or the funds to spend educating the educators. “Often they are just trying to get through the day.”
“If you want to raise quality you have to be able to take the time.”
The Early Learning and Care Council of Australia Elizabeth Death said it can sometimes be up to six years between assessing centres for quality and agreed workforce shortages were a looming crisis.
She said NSW and Victoria were implementing some impressive measures but national action was needed: “We need a nationally consistent approach,” she said.
Labor’s early education spokeswoman Amanda Rishworth said she was concerned funding cuts were leading to a drop in standards.
“We need to be doing more inspections and providing more support to services to close the gap. Parents and carers need to know that their children are getting safe and high quality early learning.”
Teacher Jess McCarthy has two children Lottie, 4, and Presely, 2, at the Frenchs Forest Mindchamps centre, newly purpose-built to cultivate the champion mindset, and said she feels comfortable her children will be ready for school when the time comes.
“They have focused play areas that expand children mind in different ways. They think about the development skills every child needs to become an active learner,” she said.