Early Childhood

Excellent: why do we need that rating for early childhood care?

By Melissa Duffy Fagan

Professional identity in the Australian early childhood education and care sector (ECEC) is strongly linked to quality assurance

Flowers, chocolates, promises: now too late for early childhood educators

By Marg Rogers and Margaret Sims

The newest Productivity Commission report: A path to universal early childhood education and care glosses over or ignores many fundamental problems within the early childhood education sector . Scarcely mentioned, or tactfully ignored, are the:* systemic issues relating to educator burnout,* poor wellbeing and morale of educators,* increasing burden of quality assurance,* emotional cost of

What happens when we cut corners: Suffer the little children

By Olivia Karaolis

Jack Swindells is why regulations for early childhood care matter. The early childhood sector is regulated by standards and laws for a reason. One of those reasons is to ensure the quality of care for children: a quality of care that provides children with the opportunity to develop in an environment that is safe. These

How this oppressive test is killing the magic of childhood

By Pauline Roberts

NAPLAN is taking the fun out of early childhood learning. Early childhood learning encompasses education for children from

The government must fix the childcare desert now

Marg Rogers, Navjot Bhullar and Laura K Doan ask: How far will the Budget’s funds stretch to fix

The emotional labour of academic labour – it’s all related

By Kathleen Smithers

Here is another of our intermittent blogs during the #AARE2022 conference. If you want to cover a session at

Provoking the children: why that matters for remarkable early learning

By Rachael Hedger

Our research shows why play matters in supporting young children’s learning and development. We have so many resources

We build submarines and the defence force. Now we must support the families who work in them

By Marg Rogers and Amy Johnson

The Federal Government has plans to expand Australian Defence Forces (ADF) to a 40-year high. They hope to increase the forces by 30% (18,500 extra personnel by 2040), the biggest increase since the Vietnam War. This will inevitably lead to an increase in the number of children and parents impacted by military service.  It won’t

ECEC: Why joy at work is wonderful (but never enough)

By Olivia Karaolis and Cathy Little

Image courtesy of Joanna Crothers Educators voted on Wednesday to take strike action on September 7 – Early

We refuse to value care – why sexism is at the core of our early childhood crisis

By Lucinda McKnight and Natalie Robertson

Introduction: The old, old problem The introduction of an extra year of education for three and four-year olds