New book argues that early childhood education and care should be transformed

Transforming Early Childhood in England: Towards a Democratic Education states that while public funding and policy initiatives have increased over the past couple of decades, long-standing problems have not been fixed and national discourse is dominated by the cost and availability of childcare at the expense of developing a holistic early education system.

Major problems that the book identifies include a devalued workforce, a culture of targets and measurement and a system split between childcare and early education. The authors stress that ‘care’ should be part of all services for all children, irrespective of their parents’ employment status, and that all early childhood education services, including schools, should recognise the needs of employed parents.

Covering 14 chapters with numerous IOE academics as authors, the book makes recommendations based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and drawing on research and examples from England and abroad.

The authors believe that a public system of early childhood education that is fully integrated should be created. This would cover policy-making, administration, curriculum, regulation, access, funding, workforce, type of provision, and be underpinned by an integrative concept, a broad concept of education working with an ethics of care.

The integrated public system would be:

• available as a right for children from birth to 6 years and their carers, combined with 12 months of well-paid maternity and parental leave, with at least 4 months available only for fathers and at least 4 months only for mothers. This would mean access to various child-and-carer services during the period of leave, with children starting to attend on their own during their second year
• delivered by a network of multi-purpose and community-based Children’s Centres, run by local authorities and non-profit organisations and providing education to all children plus other services for children and families
• staffed by graduate professionals – social pedagogues or teachers - specialising in work with children from birth to 6 years, having parity of status and conditions with compulsory school teachers, and accounting for at least 60 per cent of staff working directly with children 
• free to attend for a core period, equivalent to normal school hours in the compulsory education sector
• based on democracy and co-operation as fundamental values.

Professor Peter Moss, co-editor of the book, said: “There are deep-seated problems about the ways in which preschool aged children are looked after and educated in England today; the system of early childhood education and care does not work for children or parents, workers or society. This book both outlines the problems and sets out solutions, offering tangible hope for the future.”

Professor Claire Cameron, co-editor of the book, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important care and education services are to support parents, employment, health and society at large. But we have also seen how the workforce is fundamentally taken for granted and undervalued. Our book takes inspiration from other countries that have invested in early childhood education such as New Zealand and Denmark where the main worker is degree educated and combines education, care and upbringing. It is time we took a similar approach in England.”

Transforming Early Childhood in England: Towards a democratic education was published by UCL Press and released on 3 August 2020. A virtual event launching the book will take place on 16 September 2020.

Links

• Transforming Early Childhood in England: Towards a democratic education
• View Professor Peter Moss’s research profile
• View Professor Claire Cameron’s research profile
• Social Research Institute
• Thomas Coram Research Unit
• Centre for Understanding Social Pedagogy (CUSP)