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A Case Study of the Open Society Foundations Step by Step Program and the Work of the International Step by Step Association in Central Europe and Eurasia
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This paper draws upon the findings of a body of recent research in early childhood education to explore the possibilities that may be available to overcome structural inequalities associated with socio-economic class, gender and ethnicity in the early years. Research has shown that preschool education makes a real difference for all children and that provisions made by practitioners to cater for diversity are especially effective in overcoming disadvantage. The home education environment also makes a difference where parents or other carers in the home are aware of the contribution that they can make to children's early intellectual and social/behavioural development. Even families who are otherwise disadvantaged can support good learning outcomes where they have provided a high quality home learning environment (HLE). Research clearly highlights the need to support parents in improving some aspects of the HLE, in particular for boys. Much more generally it can be seen that there is now an urgent need to develop further inservice training for developing and monitoring provision for diversity and to encourage the development of strong parental partnerships focused on young children's learning.
As a result of the Child Poverty Act (2010), current and future governments are committed to reducing the rate of relative income child poverty in the UK to 10% by 2020-21. This paper looks in detail at the progress made towards this goal under the previous Labour administrations. Direct tax and benefit reforms are very important in explaining at least three things: the large overall reduction in child poverty since 1998-99; the striking slowdown in progress towards the child poverty targets between 2004-05 and 2007-08; and some of the variation in child poverty trends between different groups of children. However, some of the child poverty-reducing impact of those reforms acted simply to stop child poverty rising as real earnings grew over the period, which increases median income and thus the relative poverty line. The performance of parents in the labour market is important too: between regions, parental employment and child poverty trends are closely related; the overall reduction in child poverty since 1998-99 has been helped by higher lone parent employment rates; and the overall rise in child poverty since 2004-05 has been most concentrated on children of one-earner couples, whose real earnings have fallen.
Taking a broad approach, this second edition of Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care relates issues of early childhood to the sociology of childhood, philosophy, ethics, political science and other fields and to an analysis of the world we live in today. It places these issues in a global context and draws on work from Canada, Sweden and Italy, including the world famous nurseries in Reggio Emilia. Working with postmodern ideas, this book questions the search to define and measure quality in the early childhood field and its tendency to reduce philosophical issues of value to purely technical and managerial issues of expert knowledge and measurement. The authors argue that there are other ways than the 'discourse of quality' for understanding and evaluating early childhood pedagogical work and relate these to alternative ways of understanding early childhood itself and the purposes of early childhood institutions. © 1999, 2007 Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss and Alan Pence. All rights reserved.
Childcare is a topic that is frequently in the media spotlight and continues to spark heated debate in the UK and around the world. This book presents an in-depth study of childcare policy and practice, examining middle class parents' choice of childcare within the wider contexts of social class and class fractions, social reproduction, gendered responsibilities and conceptions of 'good' parenting. Drawing on the results of a qualitative empirical study of two groups of middle class parents living in two London localities, this book: takes into account key theoretical frameworks in childcare policy, setting them in broader social, political and economic contexts. considers the development of the UK government's childcare strategy from its birth in 1998 to the present day. highlights the critical debates surrounding middle class families and their choice of childcare. explores parents' experiences of childcare and their relationships with carers. This important study comes to a number of thought-provoking conclusions and offers valuable insights into a complex subject. It is essential reading for all those working in or studying early years provision and policy as well as students of sociology, class, gender and work.
On the basis of an analysis of UK parental employment between 1984 and 1994, using data from the Labour Force Survey, the authors identify three important trends: increasing integration of women with children, particularly with young children, into the labour market; increasing differentiation in mothers' employment opportunities and growing polarisation in household employment patterns; and an intensification of paid work amongst employed parents, contributing to a growing concentration of work–both paid and unpaid caring work–among women and men in the so-called 'prime working years' of 25 to 50 years. The article considers some possible consequences of these trends for children, families and communities, including the polarisation of children's childhoods, family incomes and neighbourhoods, the increasing workload on individual parents and families, tension between parents over the division of child care and domestic tasks and the issue of lime. The article concludes that the current UK focus on policies to support working parents in 'reconciling employment and family responsibilities' begs the question of how far these, and other activities, are reconcilable–and if they are, under what conditions, what cost and to whom–and may fail to address the difficult, threatening and 'wicked issues' at the heart of the work-family relationship.
Getting Sure Start started (NESS/FR/02). Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills
- M Ball
Ball, M. (2002) Getting Sure Start started (NESS/FR/02). Nottingham: Department for
Education and Skills.