Title: Corporate Child Care in Australia: Is it in the Public Interest?
1Corporate Child Care in Australia Is it in the
Public Interest?
- Jennifer Sumsion
- Charles Sturt University, Australia
-
2In Australia, corporate child care ABC Learning
- ABC Learning owns / operates 1,158 child centres
(21 of total 5,372 centres 29 of 3,886 for
profit centres) - The next largest provider (not for profit
provider) operates 145 centres - The only other remaining corporate provider
operates 44 centres (Citigroup,
2007)
3ABC Learning Centres Limited Annual Report 2006
4ABC Learnings global expansion
- UK 48 of 15,605 centres (0.3)
- USA 1,150 of 120,000 centres across 39 States
(1.1) (includes franchises in Hong Kong,
Indonesia, Philippines as part of Learning Care
takeover) - NZ 77 of 1,700 centres (4.5)
- China subsidiary (123 Global Holding) and joint
ventures planned for 2008 - (Citigroup May 07, June 07 )
5ABC Learnings plans for UK
- Owns / operates 48 Busy Bees centres
- Soon to acquire 88 Leapfrog Nurseries (in total,
0.8 of all centres) -
- Anticipated total of 250-300 centres (1.9)
-
- happy to sort of take it slow (Eddy Groves,
CEO) - (ABC Notes Prospectus, 2007 Inside Business,
2007)
6Number of ABC Learning centres
7ABC Learnings net profit Am
8A corporate success story(?)
- Investment analysts increasingly refer to
- high risk
- poor visibility (i.e. transparency)
- aggressive expansion
- mature Australian market
- low occupancy rates in USA
- vulnerable to brand damage / (reputational
risk) - share price underperformance
- (Citigroup, June 07)
9But is it in the public interest?
- What is good for the community as a community
(Stone, 2002, p.21) - Where governments and economic and social
institutions exist to serve people, rather than
the reverse (Davies, 2004, p. 305) - A social contract between business and the
general community articulating reciprocal
obligations - (Davies, 2004)
10Public interest A contentious construct
- What is in the public interest changes as
circumstances change and as values and
perceptions of the society change (Davies,
2004) - It is not in the public interest if the
activities of a corporation take unfair advantage
of public goods, distort functioning of markets,
externalize costs, produce bads (undesired or
harmful goods), acquire excessive (or any?) power
over people, or otherwise erode the health of
society and the natural environment (Davies,
2004 p. 178)
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13What crucial questions need to be asked?
- Is maximising returns to shareholders
inconsistent with providing high quality ECEC? - Is providing high quality ECEC sufficient?
- What, exactly, do we perceive to be under threat?
What evidence do we have of that threat? - Are we losing sight of the bigger picture by
focusing so much attention on just one of many
potential threats (corporatisation) to quality? - What are the costs of corporate success?
14Crucial questions
- Does ABC Learnings size / profitability bring
undue influence to conversations with government
and to its membership of policy communities?
(Ball, 2007) -
- What are its flows of influence?
- (Ball, 2007, p. 129)
- How does ABC Learning manage reputational risk,
given that its reputation is a crucially
important resource?
15How to scaffold a critical analysis in the
absence of empirical data?
- litmus tests
- e.g., Would we be concerned if this was
happening in the non-profit sector? - Cribb Balls (2005) ethical audit framework
- focusing on goals, obligations and dispositions
(see Sumsion, 2006) - Opportunity costs i.e., the costs involved in
choosing a particular direction or course of
action over another (broad ranging impact / cost
- benefit analyses)
16Public interest as a possible scaffold?
- What might a social contract between business
and the general community articulating reciprocal
obligations involve? (Davies, 2004) - transparency
- trust (that motives go beyond self interest)
- recognition (that obligations go beyond profit
maximization) - civic engagement - contribution to strengthening
social and democratic fabric - conducive / contribution to economic growth /
economic stability
17Reciprocal obligations / relations
- What is the nature of relations between
corporation, public and the state and how are
they changing?
18Public perceptions of ABC Learning(a tentative,
partial analysis)
Dimension of public interest (my) Rating Sources of empirical evidence (limited)
transparency low investment analysts researchers
trust low ECEC community parents (Harris, 2007) researchers
recognition of its responsibilities low ABC employees (Rush, 2006 Rush Downie, 2006) researchers (Purcal Fisher, 2004) social commentators
civic engagement ? -
economic growth / stability low Investment analysts researchers (Brennan, 2007)
19Purcal Fisher (2004)
- analysed interim approvals in NSW
- (ie exemption from employing a university
qualified EC teacher despite the centre being
licensed for more than 29 chn) - for-profit services had 79.4 of interim
approvals despite comprising only 52.3 of all
centres requiring an EC teacher - one unidentified provider had 31 interim
approvals (17.6 of all approvals) for its 65
services requiring an EC teacher, even though it
operated only 4 of all centres requiring
teachers.
20 Rush (2006) N 578 229 respondents from 81
community-based centres77 respondents from 30
ABC Learning centres
Indicators Community-based ABC Learning
Enough time to develop individual relationships with chn 54 29
Staff ratios never drop below legal minimum 77 52
Good variety of equipment 66 37
Nutritious food for chn Enough food for chn 74 80 49 55
21Rush (2006) less commonly reported findings
Indicators Community-based ABC Learning
If you have or had your own children aged under two, would you be happy to enrol them at the centre where you work or one with comparable quality of care? Yes 80 No (because of quality concerns) 4 Yes 70 No (because of quality concerns) 18
22Rush Downie (2006)
- 20-30 min telephone interviews N20 with
subsection of 77 ABC Learning employees who
responded to survey - explored survey questions / responses in more
depth arguably loaded questions - data indicated wide range of views concerns
seemed little different from concerns generally
reported in literature about working conditions
in long day care (except for a culture of secrecy
referred to by 25 of participants)
23Harris (2007)
- Interviewed 20 women in Townsville (North
Queensland) whose children attended long day care
centres (14 x community-based, 2 x independent
for profit, 5 x corporate) - 9 participants indicated centre met their
quality vision - (6 x community, 2 x independent, 1 x corporate)
- 4 participants indicated centre did not meet
their quality vision at all (3 x corporate, 1
unspecified)
24Australia A watershed?
- No other country in the world has allowed a
single company to assume such a commanding
position in the market Australia has, in effect,
embarked on a vast national experiment (Brennan,
2007, p. 226)
25Pessimistic perspective
- What begins as the provision of a service to
fulfill collectively determined socio-political
purposes ends up as a drive to find mass-produced
goods that can be sold profitably. The collective
needs and values that the service was originally
created to serve are gradually marginalized and
finally abandoned. (Leys, 2001, p. 4)
26Optimistic perspective
- Stakeholder activism in the form of
- demanding a social contract, and that the terms
of the contract be explicit and transparent - demanding corporate social responsibility
reporting for for-profit human services provision
that is supported by taxpayer funding - devising / having input into the development of
an audit tool that could be used for an
externally initiated audit to assist in
circumventing window dressing reporting -
27Considerations for the UK
- What, if any, social contract could be
established with childcare corporations? - What safeguards are already in place and what
might need to be introduced? - What requirements for transparency are in place /
need further development? - What forms of checks and balances are appropriate
and feasible? - How will empirical data be obtained? What data
would be most useful? - What would an effective impact / cost-benefit
analysis involve?
28References
- ABC Learning Centres Pty Limited. (2007). ABC
Notes Prospectus. - ABC. (2006). Financial Report For the Financial
Year Ended 30 June 2006 Retrieved 4 November,
2006, from http//abclcl.republicast.com/ar2006/re
publicast.asp?page1layout1controlyeszoom100
. - Ball, S. J. (2007). Education PLC Understanding
private sector participation in public sector
education. London and New York Routledge. - Brennan, D. (2007). The ABC of child care
politics. Australian Journal of Social Issues,
42(2), 213-226. - Cribb, A., Ball, S. (2005). Towards An Ethical
Audit of the Privatisation of Education. British
Journal of Educational Studies, 53(2), 115-128. - Davies, G. (2004). Economia New economic systems
to empower people and support the living world.
Sydney ABC Books. - Harris, N. (2007, July). Women's Reflections on
Choosing Quality Long Day Care in a Regional
Community. Paper presented at the Australian
Social Policy Conference, Sydney. - Leys, C. (2001). Market-driven politics
Neoliberal democracy and the public interest. New
York Verso. - Purcal, C., Fisher, K. (2004). Review of the
early childhood teachers shortage interim policy
for the NSW Department of Community Services,
Office of Childcare. Retrieved 12 December 2004.
from http//www.sprc.unsw.edu.au/reports/ECTFinalR
eport.pdf. - Rush, E. (2006). Child care quality in Australia
(Discussion Paper Number 84). Canberra The
Australia Institute. - Rush, E., Downie, C. (2006). ABC Learning
Centres A case study of Australia's largest
child care corporation (Discussion Paper Number
87). Canberra The Australia Institute. - Stone, D. (2002). Policy paradox The art of
political decision making. London W. W. Norton
and Company Ltd. - Sumsion, J. (2006). The corporatization of
Australian childcare Towards an ethical audit
and research agenda. Journal of Early Childhood
Research 4(2), 99-120.