A Strategic Assessment of the Children's Services Industry

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STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT OF THE CHILDREN’S SERVICES INDUSTRY3 International trendsFran Press, Charles Sturt UniversityThis is a version of a paper by Fran Press, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University.The paper, ‘Trends and debates in ECEC policy: a literature review canvassing policydevelopments in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom’was commissioned by the SPRC. It is used here with permission of the author.3.1 Learning from other countriesInternational comparison can serve a range of purposes. It can provide examples of goodpractice to be emulated and paths to be avoided. It can provide ‘natural experiments’,enabling policy makers and researchers to study the results of policies in a range of contexts.It can challenge the everyday practices and confront us with different philosophical andethical conceptions of everyday practices.In recent years, governments around the world have adopted new approaches to ECECplanning, policy development and administration. These are influenced by each nation’spolicy history, philosophical and ethical stance on the position of children in society, divisionof responsibility between jurisdictions and across levels of government, and theadministrative and policy location of education and care. Countries emphasise differentelements of these drivers in their early childhood policy development. In the UK, forexample, increasing women’s labour force participation and reducing child poverty have beenkey drivers of child care policy (Smith 2007). Across the globe, New Zealand’s ten-year planfor early childhood, Pathways to the Future/Ngä Huarahi Arataki, located the government’scommitment to the early years within a broad framework of raising the educationalachievement of all NZ children. Enhanced early childhood education is seen as the first stepin this process (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2002).In this section we consider academic and policy-relevant literature addressing national-levelECEC initiatives in several countries, focusing on the policy themes given prominence by theOECD’s two Starting Strong reports (outlined above). The review focuses on the UnitedKingdom, New Zealand and Canada – English-speaking liberal societies that have recentlyreviewed their national policy directions and priorities in relation to early childhood. Wehave also included some observations about Sweden, primarily because of Sweden’s role asan international exemplar of high quality, integrated care and education.3.2 The OECD principles: a review of policy and researchIn all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or privatesocial welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities orlegislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primaryconsideration. (Article 3.1, UNCROC 1990).It is appropriate to commence this discussion with reference to the United Nations Conventionon the Rights of the Child (UNCROC). Since its adoption by the United Nations (UN) in1989, the Convention has been ratified by over 200 member states, the only exceptions beingthe United States of America (USA) and Somalia. UNCROC is the most widely ratified of allUN human rights instruments (Jones 1999). Australia and Sweden ratified the UNCROC in1990, Canada in 1991, New Zealand in 1993 and the Convention came into force across theUnited Kingdom (UK) in 1992. By ratifying the Convention, countries have agreed to respectchildren's rights and to assess policies and laws affecting children against the articlescontained in the Convention.13
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT OF THE CHILDREN’S SERVICES INDUSTRYIn 2005, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released General Comment No. 7:Implementing child rights in early childhood (United Nations, 2005). Concerned with thedevelopment of a ‘positive agenda for rights in early childhood’ this paper is especiallypertinent to a discussion of ECEC policy. The rights of infants and very young children have,in many cases, been interpreted as being primarily concerned with issues such as health andsurvival. The broader principles of the Convention, in relation to areas such as participation indecision-making and education, have more usually been applied to older children. TheGeneral Comment advocates the recognition of young children as rights holders and personsin their own right, ‘active members of their families, communities and societies’ rather than‘people in the making’, waiting to be moulded by adults. It stresses the applicability to youngchildren of rights-related principles such as participation, respect for their ‘concerns, interestsand points of view’, as well as attention to their particular requirements for ‘physicalnurturance, emotional care and sensitive guidance.....social play, exploration and learning’(UN 2005).Thus the UNCROC is significant to ECEC in multiple ways. It advocates the provision ofearly childhood services; it asserts that such services should always operate in children’s bestinterests; and it promotes respect for children’s agency through the work and purposes of theearly childhood setting. The extent to which each country has actively drawn upon theConvention to inform policy and practice in early childhood education and care varies.Sweden boasts a ‘highly developed view of the child based on democratic values which givesrespect for the child as a person in its own right and a belief in the child's inherent skills andpotential’ (Korpi, 2000). New Zealand has drawn extensively on the Convention to informpolicy developments in early childhood education, particularly its strategic plan for earlychildhood education (Smith, 2007).The degree to which children’s rights principles are embedded in government policies appearsto be related to how much formal recognition is institutionalised through the creation ofministries for children. For instance, one suggestion of the OECD Country Note for the UKwas the creation of an Ombudsman for Children to work across relevant ministries to ensurethat children’s issues were addressed systematically (OECD, 2000). Sweden established theOffice of the Children's Ombudsman in 1993. A decade later, New Zealand created aCommissioner for Children and Northern Ireland established a Commissioner for Childrenand Young People. In 2004, Scotland established a Children's Commissioner; and in 2005,England's first Children's Commissioner was appointed. Neither Australia nor Canada has yetestablished national children’s ministries; although in Australia equivalent Commissions existin a number of States and Territories. The Australian government introduced legislation for aChildren’s Commission at the national level in 1974 but the Commission was neverestablished (Brennan, 1994).The OECD Policy Considerations for ECECA systemic and integrated approach to policy development and implementationThe shape of children’s early care and education has been influenced by a range of policyarenas and imperatives. The organisation of ECEC reflects changes to family and workforcestructures, research on children’s development and wellbeing, and the impact of broader shiftsin economic policy on the provision of services once considered the province of governmentor the public sector, or indeed, the family itself. The provision of child care and preschoolservices has been linked to strategies to: enable women’s participation in the paid labormarket and, by association, enable women’s citizenship (Dobrowolski and Jenson, 2004);redress disadvantage, particularly educational disadvantage and poverty; reinvigoratecommunities; and, more recently, has been linked to an enactment of children's rights.14
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