In this third contribution to the special issue we consider the complex issue of early years educators’ (EYEs) professional voices being heard and acted upon in contemporary policy debates about the future of the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector in England. Those educating young children have experience of the multiple injustices arising from low pay for workers, funding levels that test the financial resilience of ECEC providers, and the costs of care to families. Findings of a recent survey, carried out by early years membership organisation the Early Years Alliance (EYA), shed light on the fact that the early years workforce not only feels undervalued by government and wider society but that this feeling has proved to be a catalyst driving highly skilled and experienced educators away from the sector. The survey found that, of the reasons given for considering leaving the early years sector, feeling undervalued by government was the most common among EYEs, with the reason cited by three-quarters of respondents (75 per cent), closely followed by low pay (63 per cent of respondents).

‘Of the reasons given for considering leaving the early years sector, feeling undervalued by government was the most common among early years educators.’

Early years educators as policy actors

EYEs are increasingly positioning themselves as policy actors; they advocate for change in the ECEC sector and take action to influence the policy choices of government (Cairney, 2020). EYEs are advocating for policy change by participating in coordinated action. In February 2023 the EYA invited EYEs to Join the Fight for Fair Funding for the Early Years. The initiative aimed to galvanise and support local campaigning to substantially increase sector funding, ensuring it reflected the real-terms cost of delivering high-quality early education and care. However, EYEs are fragmented as a workforce; their employers, whether for profit or not-for-profit organisations, are segmented by a diverse and competitive market of ECEC providers. Policymakers (here, the democratically elected government) risk epistemic violence (Spivak, 1998) meaning they silence women’s voices and perspectives in policy debates about ECEC provision. In this context, policymakers fail to recognise that early years educators’ knowledge of injustice and ideas for policy reform are obscured by the neoliberal market of ECEC provision (Roberts-Holmes & Moss, 2021). In this way a workforce that is predominantly working-class women (Wilson-Thomas & Brooks, 2024) remains on the margins of policy debates about the future of the ECEC sector.

Membership organisations build capacity for systems advocacy

A key question to address is how EYEs can further connect and mobilise in this context. Fenech and Lotz (2018) argue that a significant task for EYEs is to engage in systems advocacy as part of their everyday professional practice. Systems advocacy ‘targets macro change’ (Fenech & Lotz, p. 20) in policy to address the rights and interests of young children, families and the ECEC workforce. However, systems advocacy as a strategy will not alone connect the valuable and local knowledge that is crucial to policy reform. In a fragmented neoliberal ECEC system, responsibility for advocacy rests with the individual. In this context, membership organisations for EYEs have a key role in both developing resources and building capacity for advocacy. In November 2024, the Alliance launched MP template letters for providers of ECEC, highlighting the impact of changes to employer national insurance contributions and increases to the national living and minimum wages. The letters call on government to either exempt early years providers from the national insurance changes or to fund the changes in full.

As a membership organisation the EYA has reimagined the ways in which EYEs contribute to policy debates by valuing and representing the local voices of women. Furthermore grassroots organisations, such as the EYA, transgress neoliberal structures by connecting EYEs as they engage in systems advocacy on matters of concern for their practice. Advocating for policy change to address systemic injustice is both a necessary and a realisable action for women working in the ECEC sector.

References

Cainey, P. (2020). Understanding public policy (2nd ed). Red Globe Press.

Fenech M. & Lotz, M. (2018). Systems advocacy in the professional practice of early childhood teachers: From the antithetical to the ethical. Early Years, 38(1), 19–34, https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2016.1209739

Roberts-Holmes, G., & Moss, P. (2021). Neoliberalism and early childhood markets, imaginaries and governance. Routledge.

Spivak, G. (1998). ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Macmillan.

Wilson-Thomas, J., & Brooks, R. J. (2024). Investigating Ofsted’s inclusion of cultural capital in early years inspections. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 45(3), 381–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2024.2325542