Struggling to maintain diversity: The marginalisation of Playcentre in government early childhood education and care policy

Abstract

Playcentre is a parent cooperative early childhood service where parents are trained and supported as the educators in the service. Once considered a ‘mainstream’ service, policy has increasingly marginalised Playcentres in favour of supporting teacher-led services. This article gives a background of parent cooperative services, and then reviews policies of the fifth National government from 2008, with an emphasis on how these policies have accommodated or excluded Playcentre. This review is presented as an argument for maintaining diversity in the early childhood education and care sector by developing policy which accommodates parent cooperative services.

“Today at Playcentre, we ….”: What values underpin narrative assessment in Playcentre?

“…Policies in early childhood education and care in many countries, as in New Zealand, are grounded in a discourse of professionalisation. Although parents are foregrounded in New Zealand's early childhood curriculum, parent-led early childhood services have a disruptive influence on this modernist drive towards specialisation (Manning, 2018).…”

“…• to listen to the requirements of a centralised performance focused policy regime which, while promoting the importance of 'local curriculum' (see for example, Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 2), are part of a larger policy tidal wave which marginalises and underfunds parent-led services (Bailey & Tamati-Aubrey, 2018;Manning, 2018).…”

“…While diversity of provision of early childhood services is a sign of a healthy marketplace where parents have choices, policy choices at the national level have since 2002, largely privileged teacher-led services (Manning, 2018). In 2002 a highly applauded 10-year strategic plan for the ECE sector set out a course for wider participation by children, with increasing levels of qualifications for teachers and greater co-operation amongst agencies (Ministry of Education, 2002).…”

“…A small but significant change in policy led to a distinction between teacherled and parent-led Early Childhood (EC) services. In the following years, incentives targeting the teacher-led services have worked to the disadvantage of parent-led services (Manning, 2018(Manning, , 2019. For example, the launch in 2007 of a '20 hours free ECE' per week programme for children aged 3-5 years old eroded sessional provision (which was often limited to 15 hours per week).…”

“…These initiatives indicate that there are philosophical and practical aspects of Playcentre which are compatible with socioculturally framed narrative assessment. However, as one commentator has indicated, the Playcentre Journal tends to provide the good news stories (Manning, 2018). No wide-scale research is evident, nor articles or reflections on lived experiences that reflect systemic challenges of implementing Learning Story-based assessment in Playcentres.…”