You and your day

A four-year-old you have been working with for two years says something heartbreaking about her family situation. A long-running educator quietly hands in her notice because the wages are not keeping up with rent. A new family arrives speaking a language no one at the centre knows. The kindergarten reform announcements from the state government keep changing, and the planning for next year is already taking longer than usual. A casual educator mentions she felt uncomfortable with how a parent spoke to her at pickup.

The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire spent his career arguing that education at every level was political, including its earliest forms. The relationships built between educators and children, the language that is used and not used, the curriculum that is taught and not taught, are political through and through. Early childhood is one of the clearest places where Freire’s argument lands, even though the politics is rarely named at the door of a centre.

Reading the politics is essential to running an early childhood service well. It is also essential to deciding whether the conditions of the work are politically tolerable, given what they ask of the people doing it.

Your community and clients

Early childhood sits inside community in ways that few other sectors do. A service is a place where families meet each other across class, race, language, and faith. It is also a place where the gaps between families become visible. Which families can afford which kinds of care, which speak which languages with which fluency, which are politically connected enough to be heard, and which are not.

Different communities have different politics around early childhood. A wealthy professional community has different expectations than a working-class one. A multicultural community has different needs than a monolingual one. A First Nations family using a community-controlled service is in a different political relationship than a non-Indigenous family using a private one. Queer-parented families navigate different conditions again. Disabled parents and parents of disabled children navigate different conditions again. Each of these communities has politics that reach the room directly.

When an educator hands in her notice because she cannot afford housing, the politics of cost of living, of women’s wages, and of housing affordability are at the door of the centre. When a parent speaks aggressively to a young educator, the politics of class, gender, and migration are at the door. The room is always already political.

Your Council and neighbourhood

Local Councils shape early childhood through planning, through community service funding in some areas, and through the local environment that families and educators move through. Council decisions about parks, libraries, public transport, and neighbourhood safety all shape what early childhood can be. Council politics on housing affordability shapes whether educators can live near the services they work at.

A Council that prioritises early childhood is in a different political position than one that does not. The way Councils decide is also political. Educators, who tend to be young women on shift work, are often poorly represented in Council politics. Multicultural and migrant families are often poorly represented too. First Nations families using mainstream services are often poorly represented again. Whose voice is amplified, and whose is filtered out, is part of reading the politics.

Your state

State politics shapes early childhood significantly, particularly through kindergarten and pre-school funding, educator regulation, and the long question of where early childhood meets school. State politics has been one of the more active layers in recent years, with kindergarten reform, ratio politics, and qualification politics all moving across multiple states.

State anti-discrimination law shapes what protection LGBTQI+ educators and families can expect. State multicultural affairs policy shapes how migrant families are received. State disability policy shapes how children with additional needs are supported. State First Nations affairs policy shapes how community-controlled services are recognised and resourced. The state-level layer of early childhood reaches across education, multicultural affairs, family violence, disability, and anti-discrimination politics.

The nation

The national politics of early childhood in Australia is one of the most active in the country. Subsidy reform, ratio reform, qualification politics, and the long-running debate about whether early childhood should be universal and free are all national questions. The political pressure has been intensifying for two decades, and the political settlement is still moving.

The national workforce conversation in early childhood is also a migration conversation, a race conversation, and a class conversation. The early childhood workforce in Australia is overwhelmingly women, disproportionately migrants, and often paid wages that have not kept up with cost of living. The conditions inside the workforce are uneven. A young Australian-born educator with a casual contract, an experienced migrant educator who arrived with overseas qualifications, a First Nations educator at a community-controlled service, and a senior teacher with a permanent role all sit inside the same political settlement under very different conditions.

The region

Early childhood across the Asia-Pacific is shaped by very different political settlements. Aotearoa New Zealand has been politically more active than Australia in some respects, particularly in early childhood education for Maori children and the integration of language and culture into early learning. Pacific Island early childhood politics is shaped by community structures very different from the Australian institutional model.

Migration flows are central to early childhood across the region. Australia recruits educators from the Philippines, India, Nepal, Fiji, and elsewhere. The political conditions of those countries shape who arrives. The political conditions of Australia, including visa politics and worker protections, shape what those educators experience when they get here.

Regional politics also shapes how early childhood is understood. The Australian model, with formal services, qualifications, and ratios, is not the global default. Many countries depend on extended family networks, on community-led care, on faith-based care, and on combinations of formal and informal arrangements. Migrant families bringing different expectations into Australian services are part of a political conversation about what early childhood is for.

The world

Globally, early childhood politics has been intensifying everywhere wealthy economies face declining birth rates, rising care costs, and increasing pressure on women’s economic participation. The question of whether early childhood should be universal, free, or heavily subsidised is being answered differently in different countries, and the answers are reshaping each country’s labour market and family politics.

The early childhood workforce globally is overwhelmingly women, disproportionately migrants, and often racialised. The same political settlement that has produced this workforce in Australia has produced it in most wealthy countries. The political backlash against migration in many of those countries is reaching early childhood systems that depend on the workers it targets.

The politics of children’s rights is also a global conversation. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by most countries, but the political work of delivering on it is uneven. Recognition of First Nations children’s rights, of disabled children’s rights, of queer-parented children’s rights, and of migrant children’s rights is moving across multiple countries simultaneously.