How the Early Childhood Care and Education Profession has Changed

How the Early Childhood Care and Education Profession has Changed.

It wasn’t long ago that early childhood education in Australia was the realm of the Kindergarten movement.  In fact the graduating students of the Kindergarten Teachers College were warned against the detrimental effects of non maternal care of children.....called in those days maternal deprivation!

Childcare was seen in Australia only as a strategy to prevent the effects of poverty and neglect of children but that was soon to change.. middle class families decided that they also wanted the benefits of child care for their children.
Where once child care was the sole arena of Kindergarten teachers, those calling themselves carers rather than teachers emerged to take their place in the profession.

This was the outcome of the Whitlam government’s decision in 1975 to create a new type of child care that was to be known as Family Day Care.   Kath Dickson Family Centre was approached in 1975 to establish Australia’s first Family Day Care.
At that time, a tension arose out of the establishment of new forms of child care ... and even today, some 40 years later, there are remnants of this tension between the original child care teachers and the new home based care and centre based care professionals.

From this tension and debate has come a child care field that is rich in scope and choice, burgeoned by a steady rise in the quality of programs and their outcomes for children.

A dark cloud descended on the profession when Eddie Groves and ABC Learning developed a methodology to take the child care benefit, due to parents, and use it to fill the pockets of his family.  He commodified children..... turned them into products that could be bought and sold on the stock market.  We are grateful that the rise and fall of this corporate child care model was over in six years.  All that is left now is the $1.6 billion debt and the opportunity for not for profit child care organisations to clean up the mess.
 The new child care and education profession has spread into care and support of the family and is seen as a pivotal player in the development of social paradigms such as community life and well being.

All of this change can sit on a continuum of less than 50 years. Incredible when you think about it.
For four decades now, early childhood care and education has been kicked around inside the political arena, though not always emerging with benefits for children and their families. Personally I cannot see this politicising changing in the future.
So, it will be both exciting and frustrating to be a part of the changes we will all face.


As long as we remember that the centre of our great mission is the child.

Janine Karetai