Promoting high quality early childhood education and care services: Beyond a risk management, performative regulatory environment
Marianne Fenech and Jennifer Sumsion
Macquarie University and Charles Sturt University
Contact Email:   Marianne.Fenechaces.mq.edu.au

Quality early childhood education and care is today recognised by governments in Australia as being of critical importance to children’s optimal development and wellbeing, and to the nation’s economic prosperity. To this end, state regulations and a national system of quality assurance are promoted in Australia as mechanisms that enhance the quality of early childhood education and care services. However, findings from an ARC funded, multi-phased study aimed at investigating early childhood teachers’ perceptions of the impact of the NSW regulatory environment on quality in long day care suggest that these regulatory requirements are limited in their capacity to effect high quality standards. We suggest that this limitation is owing to the risk management and performative construction of the current regulatory environment. In the wake of an ‘overhauled’ quality assurance system for children’s services, and an impending review of the NSW Children’s Services Regulation 2004, we propose that a transformed system of regulatory accountability underpinned by notions of ‘a decent and nonhumiliating society’ (Margalit, 1996), socially just policies (Wishart, Taylor, & Shultz, 2006) and professional trust (Power, 1994, 1997, 2004) presents as a way forward that could more effectively enhance and support quality in children’s services.

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