Early childhood educators are slaves to the demands of box-ticking regulations

Percentages of overtime during accreditation reported by early childhood educators.

To be accredited, services must provide state regulatory authorities with documentary evidence they are meeting or exceeding the measures of quality laid down by the Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA^[11]). Some participants said the demands from these rigorous quality checks have become “ridiculous”, requiring volumes of documentary evidence.

Preparing this evidence requires time away from the children, whose development depends on quality interactions^[12] with their educators. Many said they could not do the documentation in working hours because they were busy teaching children and supporting families.

Why do educators do the extra work? If the service doesn’t pass, it triggers more checks, requiring more frequent documentation. Very few educators said they were paid for this extra time.

When commenting on the number of unpaid hours, some noted the impacts on their family life:

“Too many. It caused stress at home with family.”

“We dedicated over 2 weeks of nights and weekends to be ready for accreditation and registration. Even our husbands came and did work with us.”

“Detrimental. Lack of work life balance during this time.”

A wordcloud showing how often educators used various words in their comments about working extra hours during accreditation. Author provided

Attrition is creating staff shortages

With unfair wages and increased expectations due to COVID-19^[13] health orders, many providers are struggling to staff their services^[14]. Research^[15] shows educators leave the profession when they can no longer afford to stay.

As quality education and care depend on interactions with individual children, their families and communities^[16], staff turnover is of great concern.

The quality of their interactions with caregivers, including early childhood educators, has a profound influence on children’s development.

Yet, rather than tackling these issues, the increase in managerialism^[17] in Australian education has added to the stresses of poor pay for a demanding job.

Read more: Our uni teachers were already among the world's most stressed. COVID and student feedback have just made things worse^[18]

What are the impacts of managerialism?

Managerialism creates a system^[19] where the worker is positioned as someone who is mistrusted.

In these systems, workers are given highly detailed descriptions^[20] of tasks that need to be checked by managers and authorities. Rather than doing the job they were employed to do, workers find themselves busy producing data^[21] to show they are following these instructions^[22].

Managers and authorities say this is necessary to ensure quality^[23]. Their beliefs about quality^[24] are transcribed into voluminous documents. Often these documents are so complex, even longer documents^[25] or guides^[26] are provided to decipher the original document.

In early childhood education, these include curriculum documents^[27], frameworks^[28] and standards^[29]. The Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA^[30]) creates these documents. State and territory regulatory authorities are responsible for ensuring compliance through registration and accreditation — a process of assessment and rating.

Quality may actually suffer

Many educators believed accreditation requirements lowered the quality of education and care during accreditation. One said:

“It is a joke! Everything is so inhibited, and the children and educators are far too over-regulated. The children cannot be free to learn. They cannot go near water, they cannot climb. Fear is instilled into the educators. It is a horrible and restrictive learning environment. It makes the children so small-minded and full of anxiety.”

An ACECQA survey^[31] this year found educators intending to leave the sector early blame overwork, administrative overload and burnout^[32].

Read more: Early childhood educators are leaving in droves. Here are 3 ways to keep them, and attract more^[33]

Have authorities unwittingly created an accreditation system that enslaves workers and reduces quality during accreditation periods? Further research is needed to discover the full burden of these compliance systems.

What now?

What can we do about this discovery of excessive unpaid wages and chronic underpayment of our essential workers^[34]? Being a slave is defined as being part of the slave trade, but also includes those who do not receive proper remuneration^[35] for their work. With a federal election looming, it is another matter to lobby our government about given Australia’s uneasy relationship with slavery^[36].

To recover strongly from the economic impacts of the pandemic, we need strong workplace participation^[37]. To support this participation, real reform^[38] is needed to provide universal childcare and fully staffed services. The focus must be on creating systems that support quality education and care^[39], not big data and slavery.

Read more: Quality childcare has become a necessity for Australian families, and for society. It's time the government paid up^[40]

Read more https://theconversation.com/early-childhood-educators-are-slaves-to-the-demands-of-box-ticking-regulations-167283