Present Australian Early childhood education and care system and the role of leadership

Wanju Early Learning Centre is an innovative 110-place community-based centre located in Perth, Western Australia, which has been welcoming children and their families for 20 years. Wanju’s aim is to provide an environment that nurtures children’s strengths, creativity and enquiring minds. We place a strong emphasis on offering a broad and balanced approach to care and education.

Wanju is seeking a university-qualified early childhood educator to inspire and lead our team of childcare educators.

Our ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate the following essential criteria:

• Knowledge of the current Australian early childhood education and care context and the role of leadership in this regard.  

• Knowledge of and experience with the National Quality Framework, National Quality Standard and Early Years Learning Framework.

• A strong understanding of issues around ‘quality’ in early childhood education, and the role of leadership in this regard.  

• Capacity to lead our team of educators in designing, implementing and evaluating an educational program which reflects our aims and values?

The period that starts from the birth to being five years of age is vital in many perspectives for the development, future and well being of children. However there are many fragments of Care and Education for Early Childhood also known as ECE (Bell, Jean-Sigur and Kim, 2015). The present care and Education of Early childhood in Australia provided by a diverse group of education providers in a combined market which includes profit, non profit and government organization along with organization based on community. A division between the different mix of providing care and education to the early child has slowly started diminishing.

Today Child care in Context of Australia also comprises the family of a child. It has been divided into services for care occasionally and care for long day along services for children of school-aged (Children.gov.on.ca, 2015). More than eight hundred thousand children in Australia are provided formal care services for child that includes more than six hundred thousand children below the age of six (Whalley, 2008). The system of education Preschool had been a common phenomenon in Australia.

Leadership plays a big role in this part. A Leader establishes the fact that early child care is more than education and care to the children (The role of the educational leader, 2012). Children need to be more than what guidance they are being provided. The leader must have a enthusiastic interest in curriculum of early childhood and the interest for learning more. In order to provide innovative way for education and care the leader must investigate new ways of thinking (Branscomb and Ethridge, 2010). A leader must also make an effort to establish a relationship for the staff that would lead to constructive and open conversations for a curriculum. A leader’s leadership should also identify contributions, backgrounds, experience of diverse nature that the education providers should bring forth for effective care and education to children (Crowe, McLeod and Ching, 2012).

There had been families who could not provide ample time for a proper care of their children so they opt for institutions that provide early education for children.  With an experience of providing guidance to a child I experienced that children wants attention, especially that from their close acquaintance but if a regular interaction happens then they easily finds it easy to trust the person. Child care requires a good amount of patience so that teaching is done in a careful manner (Whitehead, 2008).

National Quality Framework, National Quality Standard and Early Years Learning Framework and the role of leadership

The current Australian education of early childhood is undergoing a rapid change, policies of education and childcare and related services have been concentrating over community views and values about the women’s essential role for care providing and the family’s sanctity. Very recently the strong changing and lobbying insight about the economic significance of women along with trajectories of the development of young children have concluded initially in a stronger commitment of the government for labour supply and child care in better idea for the significance of early childhood care and education program.

Today, the junction of the ideological positions on non-parental care for children and the actuality of the participation of women workforce mean that, majority children needs some form of care by the non-parents. Nevertheless, despite the importance of care and social shifts there is no universal entitlement of care and education for children during compulsory schooling.

The role of a leader not only limits to the institute or organization he belongs to. The role is for a better society of children. Leaders lead and provide guidance to their staff for performing better in their job. The job is to provide a good standard of care and education. The efficiency does not lie in the quality the standard but in the innovative and acceptable way of providing education and care. Hence creativity is the key player for a leader (Gestwicki and Bertrand, 2011). The leader should apply creativity in their way of teaching as well as encourage their staff to creatively apply effective process of learning. This process must be ensured that they are helpful and will work effectively in making a child learn at his/her early age (Isenberg and Jalongo, 2010).

I think along with care and education activities relating to moral guidance for the children is also very important. This is because if a direct message is given to children regarding what to do and what not to do then that wouldn’t make an imprint in their mind and won’t last for long. Whereas playful activities like teamwork and importance of understanding how to behave and understand what is right and what is wrong is a vital and most appreciating task.

Every Childs future is nurtured by the care giver which provides a better development in the early stage of a child. This requires a good quality of care and education that provides better developmental and educational outcomes. The national quality standard initiates a new concept of quality standard across family day care, long day care, outside school hours and preschool.

For a Bed (ECE) student, it is necessary to have a complete understanding of the trends and matters in care and education for children from birth to 8 years old and be well prepared for further studies or work in the field of care and education for young children. The teacher should have a Certificate of Ontario Teacher. The BEd ECE learners program helped me to take on positions that need a strong base in early care and education. The benefits of being able to examine the standards for national professional are- It helped in understanding the importance of not only teaching young children but also understand the meaning of leadership.  Outcomes like better health are achieved with good quality care and I think employment and education are the good outcomes that a child prospers when they grow. In order to provide a good quality of care it is needed to maintain a ratio of staffs because children need to rely on people and also they need to adopt the comprehending style of teaching. Too many ways would make it hard for children to adapt learning process. The main aim of national quality framework was to provide the best possible start in life for children and the accountability and transparency of teaching.

Essential criteria for the ideal candidate

The national quality standard:

It provides the educational and developmental benefits to the childrens which includes:

• The quality ratio of improved educator and child.
• Greater care and attention individually for children
• Enhanced skilled educators
• Quality support for development and learning and
• National register for parents to access information about quality of care service and education in this field.
• The Early years learning framework: the framework

Through the early years of learning outcome I have gained some experience on the complex and integrated learning and development of children’s around five years of age, I found that the children have a good sense of identity at this stage. They are very much contributed to their world. They have strong sense wellbeing and they are confident learners. In my knowledge and experience I have seen that the process of learning is influenced by the capabilities of children, their preferences and dispositions. I have also understood the importance of engaging communities and the families of the child.

The outcomes clearly demonstrated that how the basic three elements practices, outcomes and principles guides the assessment and decision making for the promotion of children learning.

Children are good learners at a very early age they tend to copy and repeat what exactly they see. Use of abusive language makes a negative impact to the children (SUMSION, SHEPHERD and FENECH, 2010). Here the physical environment and the conversation of parents are to be partly blamed. Anything colourful and moving attracts the children therefore it is obvious that the children gets attracted to videos in T.V or Laptops or in Tabs, if the content conveys a good message without abusive use of language then it helps to set a proper environment and helps in their growth (Maher and Bellen, 2014).

Children require attention and their creativity needs to be encouraged. I have seen at a very early age children has a good imagination power and they see things in a simple way of their own. This imagination power is now very much affected by what happens around and what is been forcefully implemented (Maynard and Waters, 2014). If a child is asked to interact with a television personality live in a show, then the way he will behave will differ from the way he usually behaves. This is because their parents generally implement the idea of how to behave and what to say so that the personality would get impressed (Pearson and Degotardi, 2009). Definitely a child needs to learn how to behave but not suppressing his/her imagination at stake.

There are certain issues related to ECE and care they are:

For working families it is crucial to afford and access quality childcare, there are also some issues like the impact of early childhood development of later learning and life outcomes, the importance of ECEC services in supporting participation of workforces specially among the working mothers. In this context the role of leadership is:

• To encourage the staff for having a session with the parents of a child.
• To create a strategy for making ECEC affordable and accessible for the families
• To enhance the quality of education and care providers by constant evaluating, designing training schedules for them and evaluation process.
• Guide the subordinate whenever required.

Having an overview on teachers professional standard on national level helped in understanding the professional practice, learning and engagement facilities that helps in improving the teaching quality. It provided an overall guidance on how teacher should contribute positively through their

Experience and how they are expected to do the four career stages, that is the proficient highly accomplished, graduate and the lead (Teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au, 2015).

Self assessment on leadership according to Australian teacher’s professional standards:

This assessment is an aim to demonstrate the experience and capacity of leadership potential. There are certain aspects where I need to work, that are in order to implement a good strategic plan for the organization it is very important to understand the structure of the organization and make relevant policies. More innovation is needed in my operation than using old rules and policies. Patience is a big skill that I need to have for any evaluation and one thing that I should follow is fair policy by avoiding favouritism.

Where the manager focuses on the structure there a leader concentrated on his people. The leader is an example setter whom everyone should follow. A manager is someone whom people will follow but one who is controls and guides people is a manger. According to my experience a teacher should be an excellent manager as well as a leader. A teacher should influence their student to be like him/her. But a manager would just control them and give them directions. When a teacher goes beyond teaching a student that’s when a leader get his way.

While working for a reputed educational centre I experienced conflicts among the children which needed to be controlled tactfully. For a child it is important to pay attention and to give necessary lesson and make them understand where they went wrong. This was done in such a way that they understood the importance of behaving in a disciplinary way and the significance of apologizing. Apart from that I helped my colleague to sort out an issue that happened between a parent and her. Everyone should know how to behave with the families and the children.

It is also important as an educator to establish a fair treatment of children of disability, other communities and of poor background. Every child including the staff should be treated fairly, it is important to maintain a healthy education centre.

References

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18. Aitsl.edu.au,. (2015). Standards – AITSL, Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Retrieved 22 March 2015, from https://www.teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au/Standards/Standards/AllStandards