A Strategic Assessment of the Children's Services Industry

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT OF THE CHILDREN’S SERVICES INDUSTRYemployment of highly qualified staff, leads to less reliance on externally imposed governmentstandards to ensure quality. Hence, commentators such as Moss (2007b) point to the presenceof a skilled, knowledgeable and reflective early childhood workforce as central to the creationand sustaining of ethical and respectful early childhood services.It is important to note that within early childhood academic, policy and practitionercommunities, the notion of ‘quality’ has been contested (see for instance, Dahlberg et al.,1999). This contestation does not downplay the focus upon children’s wellbeing, but ratherhighlights the fact that understandings of, and approaches to, good quality early childhoodservices are embedded within particular cultural and political contexts. Critics of thediscourse of quality in early childhood policy further claim that the concept of ‘quality’ isproblematic because ‘you have closure when the norm is attained’. They prefer to useconcepts such as ‘meaning-making’ and ‘ethical practice’ in early childhood which emphasisea skilled, knowledgeable and reflective workforce able to engage with children, families andcommunities (Moss 2007b).To develop with the stakeholders broad guidelines and curricular standards across ECECservicesThe introduction and implementation of early childhood curriculum within prior to schoolservices raises a number of policy issues and its focus is often contested. Key debatesconcerning early childhood curriculum, apart from those that focus upon content, includewhether or not they should be compulsory, and to what early childhood services they shouldapply. Soler and Miller (2003) describe early childhood curricula as ‘sites of struggle’ as‘parents, teachers, researchers and politicians often have strong and conflicting views’ about‘content and contexts for learning and development in early childhood’ (p. 59).Soler and Miller’s description of the staged curriculum developed for England as ‘concernedabout what education is for rather than what the experience of education might entail’ (2003,p.62, emphasis added) neatly encapsulates the tensions emerging from differingunderstandings of the nature and purpose of curriculum. These competing understandingsmight be crudely grouped as either ‘instrumentalist’ or ‘socio-cultural’ in nature.Instrumentalist constructions tend to be highly prescriptive, while socio-cultural views areregarded as more appreciative of children’s agency and the experiences of children in the hereand now.The OECD in its Country Note for the UK expressed its concern about the downwardpressure placed by the school sector on early childhood services, particularly in relation togoals for early learning. The UK curriculum for 3-5 year-olds is linked to over 60 learninggoals and has been described as ‘highly prescriptive’ (Moss 2007a, p.9). The OECDcommented that early childhood settings felt under pressure to ‘resemble downwardextensions of primary school’ even though this approach is not considered supportive ofyoung children’s learning (2000 p. 39). The OECD (2006) favors the development ofcurriculum frameworks that enable responsiveness to local conditions, that are respectful ofthe professional judgment of teachers, and that have the capacity to incorporate new ideas,perspectives and understandings. In this respect it is important to note the emergence of a newphenomenon, the curriculum developed and promulgated from the central office of a businessor corporation. For instance, ABC Learning, one of the world’s largest child care providersboasts its own curriculum (ABC Developmental Learning Centres, 2007).Alternative constructions of curriculum are less concerned with academic outcomes and moreattentive to ensuring a respectful environment for children that works with their naturaldispositions for learning. For instance, the NSW Curriculum Framework centres upon a26