Abstract
This colloquium argues that writings on leadership in the early years commonly assume a service ethos. The aim of nurseries and other early childhood settings is to provide a service for children and their parents, and the task of leadership is seen to be to find effective ways of defining and realizing this aim. But increasingly, and especially in English-speaking countries, early years childcare and education is viewed as an industry, as a specialized and speculative business. This has had major repercussions for the operation of services, especially in England where the various intermediary levels between individual nurseries and national or state policies, which have provided opportunities for discussion and exchange of practice, and a basis for negotiated standards for leadership, have been stripped out. Processes for accountability are badly eroded. Concepts of leadership are necessarily contextual.
Keywords
Contextual frameworks
From 1986 to 1990, I ran a local authority early childhood education and care (ECEC) service. My job, as a senior education director, was to articulate and develop this policy with my colleagues, and to work as much as possible with parents and community representatives to implement it, so that services were as fairly distributed as possible or, if anything, slanted in favour of the poorest and those who needed them most. Our directorate team was responsible for approximately 2000 practitioner staff and more than 300 nurseries, funded directly and indirectly by the region. I had a budget – in today’s terms – of around £40 million. We oversaw the regulation of the voluntary sector and childminders, and the then miniscule private sector. We ran in-service training and held participative discussions across the sector on ideas about quality and as part of an attempt to think critically about the conditions under which children flourish. Alongside these discussions, we oversaw a research programme into the effectiveness of our initiatives, run with three local universities. I represented the local authority on all kinds of boards and committees, national and international (Penn, 2018).
Twenty years later, in the UK, the circumstances and the context of ECEC services have completely changed. The intermediary functions of the local authority have almost entirely disappeared and have been replaced by an ethos of business competitiveness, in which the role of the individual nursery, or nursery chain, is paramount. Some of the changes are summarized here.
Planning and location of ECEC services
The free-for-all of the market has replaced whatever functions local authorities previously undertook in matching supply and demand. Eighty-four percent of all provision for children under three is provided in the private market. 1 For older children, local authority nursery schools and nursery classes attached to primary schools still function, but these are being eroded, especially free-standing nursery schools which were once regarded as ‘centres of excellence’, the beacon for all other provision. 2
Local authorities have no longer any role in defining, maintaining or developing the services in their area. It is left up to entrepreneurs to decide, on the basis of market criteria, what services will sell and where to locate them. There is no overall planning and no external restriction or guidance on where or when entrepreneurs set up their nurseries, except in terms of minor planning details such as car-parking space and fire regulations. Independent operators can set up (and close down) when and where they choose. Predictably, entrepreneurs prefer to locate their nurseries where incomes are most likely to be stable – that is, in wealthier areas. 3 Parents in England (as well as in the constituent regions) are free to ‘choose’ whatever is available and affordable for their children. As always in a market system, freedom to choose services is contingent on income and mobility. Supporting vulnerable children is no longer a priority.
Conceptions of quality of ECEC services
The English government has centrally set the criteria for assessing nurseries. Although the criteria, embodied in the legislation (Department for Education, 2018) and applied in research (Melhuish and Gardiner, 2017), were notionally based on formal consultation and parliamentary discussion, there is now no local authority input and no ongoing discussion at a local level about practice and how it might be enriched or developed. Various universities or other agencies may try to hold discussions about aspects of the legislation, 4 but implementation within the legislative framework is entirely a matter for the provider/owner.
The guidance on curricula is narrow. For example, there is no curricular requirement for music, or art, or environmental awareness, which are typically part of the timetable in other countries. The guidance on space and the physical characteristics of the nursery is limited. 5 Because the guidance is entirely centralized, it is again up to the entrepreneurs/owners to decide on how to organize the physical characteristics of the setting, as well as its curricular regime.
Inspection and quality control of ECEC services
The government has centralized the inspection of ECEC services in one body, Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education). There is no locus for local authorities or any other body to judge or discuss the quality of the provision on offer, or to try to develop or enhance it. Inspections are carried out every four years, unless there is grave concern at an inspection, in which case the next inspection will be scheduled to take place within one year. The inspectors follow a ‘tick-box’ guidance manual for every visit, wherever the nursery and whatever its particular aims. There is no discussion and no follow-up to the inspection report.
It is not possible for any local authority or concerned organization to do anything about worrying situations – even assuming that they know about them – because there is no avenue for raising concerns. Individual parents may make complaints, and it is then up to the owner of the nursery to take action about the complaint. But in the end, the market does not deal with any abstract concern for children’s well-being. It is assumed that the market patrols and corrects itself, and that if parents do not like the nursery, they will not use it. One of the roles of local authorities used to be the sharing and promotion of good practice within and across nurseries. Private nurseries are not concerned to share good practice; rather, the opposite – good practice is frequently seen as a market advantage, which is closely guarded against competition.
On the other hand, there has been a proliferation of what is sometimes called ‘economists in the wild’, such as specialized finance companies, software developers and childcare property sales specialists (Gallagher, 2017). Nursery owners tend to draw on expertise like this, which is more suited to the business aspects of their enterprise, rather than on the advice that local authorities once gave, on meeting the complexities of the needs of parents and children, or the ongoing development of sophisticated curricular practices.
Funding
The funding of nurseries used to be organized via local authorities, either through direct provision or through grant-aiding. This supply-side funding enabled local authorities to have an oversight of the services on offer, and to coordinate and develop them locally, and to try to ensure fair access and affordability. Instead, for the last 10 or so years, the funding of childcare has been through subsidy and tax systems, and has followed individual children. This makes it almost impossible to impose conditionalities – that is, increased or better services in return for funding. Private operators can charge what they like for ‘extras’; there is no ceiling on charges. In most other countries, some kind of ceiling on fees – amounting to 15–20% of household income – is commonplace (Harding and Cottell, 2018). The UK is the most expensive country in which to purchase childcare – currently 30% of household income (Luxton, 2016).
Staff pay and conditions of work
Sixteen percent of childcare workers for children under three still work in the public sector. Their pay, conditions and work tasks are defined and agreed in binding agreements with employers and unions. These are listed in the exhaustively comprehensive Green Book, the log of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services, jointly negotiated between local authority employers and unions. For the rest of the childcare workers for children under three in the private sector, there are no negotiated agreements, and pay and conditions and work tasks are determined by individual nursery owners or companies, and vary widely. There are no criteria for pay and remuneration, other than a minimum-wage criterion, which is not always observed. Childcare workers do not usually have union representation or any kind of voice, and their conditions of work may not cover the usual benefits such as pension, sick pay and holidays. 6 The most recent government provider survey suggests that at least 20% of childcare workers receive less than the minimum wage (UK Government, 2016). It is up to the business owner to determine rates of pay. The recruitment and retention of staff is now regarded as the major problem faced by nurseries.
Staff support and training
There have been attempts in the past to introduce unified training systems, leading up to and including degree-level training. 7 But as the private sector has expanded, there are now many types of qualifications and many providers of training – some good and some on the cowboy end. As one senior figure put it: ‘It’s like the wild west out there’ (personal communication). Outside of local authority employment, qualifications are not usually linked to pay entitlements or career progression, which means that there is not much incentive any longer to obtain them. Certification in mathematics and English at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) level (aged 16) has been dropped as a requirement.
Private owners increasingly tend to provide their own in-house training (if at all), rather than buy into or rely on colleges or universities. In-house apprenticeship-based initial qualifications have been set up by big companies themselves – which raises all sorts of issues about transferability. There are issues about the worth of qualifications outside of the childcare industry, or even outside a given workplace. There are increasing numbers of staff without any qualifications at all. Working in a nursery is regarded as an easy option by young deskilled women whose employability prospects are poor.
Research
Under a Labour government, there was a flourishing of research into ECEC. This research was openly published on government websites. Many local authorities conducted their own research into different aspects of the ECEC service they were providing and developing. The government still commissions research into ECEC, on a tendering basis, from interested contractors, public and private, but the research is mainly to inform (and justify) government policy and to measure effectiveness. It does not any longer have a developmental role in improving local practice. At the same time, local authority budgets and remits have been so pared down that they too have no role in research. It is unlikely that any large childcare company would welcome independent research which might result in any kind of criticism of its practice.
Accountability
What I have described here is a system of early education and childcare without any intermediaries. You could argue that this is an improvement on a situation where parents’ requests were mediated – not always successfully – by a local authority, and where nursery practice was similarly – not always effectively – also mediated by a local authority. This system of intermediary control is usually called ‘accountability’; democratic mechanisms are seen to be in place, where all aspects of practice can be reviewed and discussed, changes can be made and future plans endorsed. For example, in Norway, where there is a large private sector, local authorities take an oversight of provision in their area in order to make sure that every family and child’s needs are fairly and equally met, and that the distribution of places benefits all children and can be afforded by all families. Each nursery, in turn, whether publicly or privately provided, provides an annual plan, which must be agreed by parents and staff, and which shows some evidence of taking children’s views into account. The local authority approves and compares the plans that are submitted annually. There are many opportunities for discussion about the content and direction of the services (see Jacobsen and Vollset, 2012). Leaders must develop their strategies in light of these accountability obligations.
In the eyes of the business community, this kind of accountability is seen as ‘red tape’ or ‘over-regulation’. It is assumed that the care and education of a young child is also a commodity subject to market fluctuations and pressures, and the less regulated the better, since the market will find its own level. 8
Supranational organizations
The European Union and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, over a period of about 20 years, have provided many papers and discussions about ECEC services – by academics, politicians and various interest groups representing the needs of children and their families. These organizations now have a body of work which provides comparative statistics and stresses the importance of good systems to support good nurseries and good leaders. The work of those bodies is scrutinized, not least in the pages of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood. The issue of representation on such influential bodies is problematic in a stripped-out, privatized system.
Conclusion
Leadership is always contextual; it occurs in the context of a specific organization and in a specific economic and political climate. Leadership in the context of a business enterprise involves a set of financial priorities which are often at odds with those of a service-led organization, where the overriding aim is to ensure the well-being of children and their families, and especially those children who, for one reason or another, may be perceived as vulnerable. Leadership ideally operates at a number of levels within a nursery and at an intermediary level involving some grouping of nurseries. In the UK, the intermediary levels have almost entirely been stripped out, raising deep questions of accountability.
No doubt there are good private nurseries with conscientious owners and inspired leaders who provide a considerate, loving and imaginative service for young children and their families. But in general, a privatized system means that they will always be the exception rather than the rule. An alternative view is that leaders or managers are best described as firefighters, struggling to maintain staff retention and recruitment in a demoralizing situation where pay, prospects and job conditions are poor, parents struggle to afford the fees, and vulnerable children receive little, if any, extra support. 9
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.