ABSTRACT
Key words and concepts: care vs education; integrated provision; parents and professionals as partners; qualifications; pay and conditions; schoolification; universal access; ecological model.
We have already noted that in almost every country early childhood care and education (ECCE) have been and sometimes are still split between the two traditions, care and education. Care was initially developed as a concern for the welfare of children of workingclass parents, who needed a safe place whilst their parents were at work earning a living. Education was developed as a service largely for the children of middle-class parents, wanting their children to have a good start in life by being engaged in what were seen to be educational activities carefully designed to meet the needs (if not, necessarily, the interests) of preschool age children. In this chapter we address whether this division of care vs education meets the needs of children and their families and if not what are the benefits of integrating or combining learning and care. The concerns are: (a) where the emphasis is primarily on education (as in a nursery school or nursery class in a school) care may not be seen as important yet we all know that that care is essential wherever young children are concerned; and (b) where the emphasis is on care alone (as in a childcare centre) the message might be that learning is not important yet we all know that children are learning wherever they are. Bringing care and education together seems an obvious solution but, as always, change is difficult and money is always an issue. Worldwide it is evident that governments have traditionally been more willing to fund education rather than care. In some countries care is still seen as the poor and rather distant relative of education.
