ERO report says almost half of our centres are not doing enough for under-3s in vital developmental areas. Photo / Getty Images
ERO report says almost half of our centres are not doing enough for under-3s in vital developmental areas. Photo / Getty Images
ERO's latest report on how well early childhood services are supporting infants and toddlers to be competent communicators and explorers is very sobering.
It highlights again what we have known for some time: there is a need to strengthen specialist training for those working with infants and toddlers in early childhood services. This need was evident in an earlier report by ERO published in 2009. The 2009 report showed that in just under half of the centres, teacher-child interactions did not foster and extend children's interests and ideas.
Additionally, fewer than a quarter of centres had "well-embedded programme planning", meaning that three-quarters of centres did not. These findings are echoed in the current report. Just over 54% of 235 services reviewed by ERO in 2014 were found to support under-three-year-olds to become competent communicators and explorers. The remaining 46% services provided curricular support that was classified as either of limited responsiveness (30%) or non-responsive (16%).
Today's report shows that over the last six years nothing much has changed to improve the quality of infants' and toddlers' experiences in early childhood services. This is despite the fact that the Government has been repeatedly advised of the need to improve provision for this youngest age group, including by the Sector Advisory Group which Government itself set up in 2012 to make recommendations on exactly this issue.
The Sector Advisory Group recognised that the current participation of infants and toddlers in group EC services is the highest it has ever been, and the concerns raised in the Children's Commission's inquiry into non-parental education and care for infants and toddlers as well as by the Government's own ECE taskforce in 2010. Its recommendations particularly emphasised the need for specialised professional development for all staff working in services licensed for under twos. It also recommended improvements in regulations in order to enhance children's learning.
Professor Carmen Dalli
A surprising finding in the current report is that structural factors such as adult:child ratios, group size and staff qualifications did not contribute significantly to the variability of quality across centres. This contradicts research which since the late 1970s has consistently demonstrated that adult-child ratios, group size, and teacher qualifications are integrally connected to the quality of children's experiences.
Structural elements provide the preconditions for quality interactions between teachers and children, and interact with contextual and process factors such as the attitudes of staff towards children, the philosophical beliefs and auspices of the centre, centre leadership, and the organisational structure of centre . There is, in effect, a web of influences within which the structural factors (adult-child ratios, group size, and staff qualifications/education) provide the enabling base.
For example, the ability of adults to engage in one-to-one interactions with infants and toddlers is directly related to there being enough adults to go round. Research shows that for this to happen a ratio of 1 adult to 3 under-twos is ideal and 1:4 is good enough.
Our regulations stipulate a minimum ratio of 1:5. A pre-election promise by National to regulate a ratio of 1:4 has fallen by the wayside. Small group sizes are also necessary in order to create a calm environment which is low in stress to maximise healthy cognitive and socio-emotional development. In such an environment, an adult who is not continually stretched to attend to big numbers of children will be able to notice and recognise infants' communicative attempts and, if they have the appropriate skills, will respond in ways that engage children in interactions which encourage them to keep communicating - thus enhancing their language and overall communicative competence. These skills do not come naturally; they require specialist training.
Encouraging exploration also depends on specialised training. Creating environments that are rich in opportunities for exploration requires that teachers understand very young children's competences and how to utilise and extend them. They will understand that children experience the world through all their senses and that both the physical as well as the emotional resources need to reflect this.
The ERO report highlights that we have not yet got it right for the growing population of infants and toddlers in our early childhood centres. A welcome feature is that it highlights where effort needs to be put to get it right. This message needs to be heeded.
