The bigger picture

The political question of how small children are cared for and educated has been politically contested in modern societies since at least the early nineteenth century. Different traditions have answered it in different ways, with different political consequences for women, for working-class families, and for children themselves.

The Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, working from the early twentieth century, developed a political argument about early childhood that reshaped thinking globally. Her argument framed small children as active political subjects whose agency, dignity, and intellectual capacity required institutional recognition, rather than as empty vessels to be filled with adult instruction. The political consequence of her argument was a reframing of early childhood education from charity to entitlement, from custodial to educational. Her work reached Australia through training programmes, parent communities, and the political project of expanding what early childhood education could be.

The Italian educator Loris Malaguzzi, founding what became the Reggio Emilia approach in post-war Italy, took the political conversation further. His argument was that early childhood education was a political project of building democratic societies, that children's voices were political voices, and that educators had a political role as collaborators rather than instructors. The political legacy of this approach continues to reach Australian early childhood through pedagogical training, programme design, and the political conversation about what high-quality early childhood education looks like.

The colonial transfer 

Early childhood education in colonial Australia inherited British and European political settlements. The free kindergarten movement, transmitted from Germany through Britain to Australia in the late nineteenth century, was a political project of philanthropic women's organising. The political idea that the children of working-class women needed early educational intervention was a Victorian-era political position, contested at the time and contested again now.

What that political vision excluded is part of the history. First Nations children had their own systems of early learning, embedded in Country, kinship, ceremony, and the deep political conditions of being raised in community. The colonial early childhood tradition was not built for First Nations families. The active political project of removing First Nations children from families, intensifying through the twentieth century into the Stolen Generations, broke the political conditions of First Nations early childhood in ways that are still doing political work today. Aboriginal Children and Family Centres, where they exist, are operating as part of the long political work of repair.

The political settlement that produced the Australian kindergarten system was a women's political achievement. The kindergarten union, the kindergarten teachers' college, and the political organising that built early childhood as a profession in Australia were the work of women operating in political conditions where their political agency was constrained, and the political legacy of that organising continues to shape who works in early childhood and on what terms.

The post-war settlement and the developmental turn

The post-war political settlement transformed early childhood across the industrialised world. The political idea that early childhood was a critical period for development, drawing on emerging child development research, reshaped what kindergartens were understood to be doing.

The developmental turn was a political settlement, with political consequences. The political idea that small children needed expert intervention from trained early childhood teachers, that play was educational rather than recreational, and that the early years required public investment, was a political achievement that reshaped what kindergartens, child care centres, and early learning programmes were politically able to claim. 

The political settlement also produced the gendered division of early childhood work. The feminisation of early childhood, established in Australia through the kindergarten teaching profession, produced workforce conditions that have shaped the sector ever since. The political conditions of feminised care and education work, including wages that have not kept up with comparable teaching, casualisation, and limited industrial protection, are the legacies of decades of political decisions.

The feminist demand and the marketisation

The feminist political demand for accessible childcare, intensifying from the 1960s, produced the political conditions for federal childcare funding. This was a political achievement, won through women's organising and contested at every stage. The political conversation about whether childcare should be primarily an educational matter, primarily a labour-market matter, or primarily a child welfare matter, has continued to reach the sector ever since.

From the 1990s, a marketisation political settlement reshaped early childhood. The Child Care Subsidy, the consumer-citizen framing, and the introduction of for-profit providers at scale all produced political conditions that shape contemporary providers. The collapse of ABC Learning in 2008 surfaced the political risks of the marketised settlement. The political contest over for-profit, not-for-profit, and community-controlled provision continues today.

The universal-access turn 

The political conversation has shifted again. State governments, particularly Victoria and New South Wales, have been moving toward universal-access politics for early childhood education. Three-year-old kinder, four-year-old kinder, and integrated early learning models are being introduced in different forms.

This is a political achievement of sustained advocacy, building on more than a century of political organising. The political question of whether universal access becomes the next durable settlement, or whether political composition shifts produce a different outcome, is unresolved.

The present moment

Universal-access politics, the workforce crisis, and the political backlash against feminist, queer, trans, racial-justice, and First Nations recognition are reshaping early childhood now.

Universal-access politics is moving at different speeds across states, with providers in jurisdictions moving fastest absorbing political conditions providers in slower jurisdictions are not yet facing.

The workforce crisis carries decades of wage and conditions politics into the present. National conversations about wage parity with teaching, about migration policy for educators, and about the sustainability of careers in early childhood are producing political pressure that providers absorb continuously.

The political backlash reaches early childhood through resistance to inclusive curriculum, hostility to LGBTIQ+-inclusive practice, and political attacks on First Nations cultural presence in services.