My union, UCU at Brighton, are about to embark on another round of strikes against redundancies for our IT colleagues. Some colleagues who were made redundant have decided to take the money and run, other have found positions elsewhere. No one can blame them for that – in this time of chaos and uncertainty around the pandemic why put yourself in a a position where you are faced with further financial uncertainty, whilst forced into the realisation that the institution you have devoted yourself to by giving them your output, time and skills, does not seem to value you. The realisation must hit you that you are a very small cog in the wheel of the financially driven machine where money means more than people. No one is indispensable as a few people who have taken voluntary severance have told me, some with bitterness as they did not really wish to leave but felt pushed out.

However, one UCU IT colleague still wants to fight his unfair redundancy. Whilst some may say why fight for the one and put yourself and students through this strike action, to them I say “all for one…and one for all” in true musketeer style! I have listened to colleagues say “well, at least the majority still have a job.” However, they forget that many of those that were left were forced into different contracts, and found their workloads had grown significantly to fill in the gaps of those made redundant and a new way of working. Is increasing stress, depression, burnout, feelings of hopelessness and lack of self esteem worth ‘still’ having a job? Perhaps as a cog in a wheel you can just be replaced when you become incapable of work because of this? Perhaps you could be replaced by someone on a lesser salary because they “just want a job”? Is this really all we should strive for? A recent comment “Well at least they have a job” is exactly what some employers love to hear – that staff will accept whatever is dished out because they are fearful that they will lose their jobs, but is also a sign of what I dislike about parts of society and the “Well, I’m alright Jack” attitude. Caring about all is what makes a strong community in my mind. Our society can be judged on how as individuals we look after every member. It feels like we are failing in so many ways.

Other colleagues have said “We will never win, so what’s the point?” In a previous post where I wrote about industrial action, I quoted Martin Niemoeller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

On one level we can look at union action in terms of our own vulnerability and if we take an individualistic view: “At least I have a job”. However, whilst our UCU action now is to fight for one person, tomorrow it might be any one or more of us in that position. The threat is real.

There seems to be a particular direction of travel for Universities. Increasingly we have seen marketisation and business-speak creeping into higher education. A blog from UCU colleagues at Brighton reminded me of a Tweet I had been shocked by in February 2020 with photographs of various University VCs attending a presentation by the Amazon company on “How Amazon Helps Universities Innovate”. I am sure many staff and students will have noticed the creep towards a consumerist model based on data and productivity, constant polls and evaluations with strong similarities to the star ratings of Amazon products or request for a thumbs up if your delivery was good. The data is used against staff to increase targets and ratings. At every turn the collection of data is required, courses pitted against one another in order to be allowed to recruit (and keep your course ‘viable’). Chastisement follows if the data ‘proves’ some perceived misdemeanour. Productivity is the name of the game, and getting more for less is the mantra. All this in the name of greater financial security, but at a human cost. The blog by UCU Brighton also draws connections to how many universities are taking advice from consultancy firms in order to reduce costs through looking at data. The suggestion seems to be that you need to look at the ‘shape and size’ of your portfolio of courses in order to ‘secure the future’. How long before redundancies in an IT department are replicated across the University? For me, the fight for one, is the start of a fight for many.

Unions are a thorn in the side of employers and as such perhaps seen as a stem to be pruned out. We currently fight for one – how easy would it be for the University to resolve this dispute? However, it feels as if this is a bigger fight for them, and a way to pick up their secateurs to prune away that strong but offensive-to-them branch. Win at any cost. In my youth in the 60s/70s I had been fed with the message that unions were nit-picking and used their power to go out on strike on a whim as an excuse to sit around a brazier doing no work, and shout at those who actually knew best. I was told that unions didn’t have a place in the modern world – some basic rights had been won and that was enough. My ignorance was fed to me by society and the media. I kept my head down for other reasons too and my wish to remain unnoticed as noticeably ‘other’. I convinced myself that it was easier to look down, do my job well and to the best of my ability. I always had a niggling feeling that sometimes what was effecting my job sat beyond my community in the early childhood sector, but that was something I felt I could not influence. I was taught to be grateful for what I had.

It wasn’t until I went to University as a mature student that I began to began to look upwards and outwards beyond my immediate workplace to notice what outside influences there were effecting what happened to my work on the ground. I noticed that individuals could have influence in different ways, especially when they moved away from thinking of themselves as an individual, and instead recognised the power they held when joined to a community. I discovered that gratefulness can be a tool of those in power in order to subjugate. I, and many others who look like me, will have recognised that we had previously swallowed the lie told to us that we should be grateful for the crumbs from the master’s plate. We all deserve more than the mere crumbs and the feeling that this is all we are worthy of.

Anyway, sorry I digress slightly! Unions understand the power of a community who are prepared to fight for one for the future good of all. This dispute and what is currently happening across the country has thrown this into stark relief. Education, as the right for all, has been under attack for many years. During the pandemic this assault has been accelerated. The power of unions to support members has been evident, for example the NEU rising to offer advice, support and guidance to members and the lobbying of government to magnify individual but collective concerns. This is in stark contrast to my beloved early childhood sector, one of the most undervalued, underpaid phase of our Education system. They are in crisis, forced into continuing to deliver services to all children despite a lockdown. Many may close forever without financial support, many risk their health with little help to lessen that risk. Approximately 98% of the workforce are women and membership of a union is low. If you are paid a pittance how can you afford to join one? When I was a practitioner contributing my small wage to the household kitty was a necessity. Often feeling powerless, unrecognised and separate, just as I did, practitioners turn their eyes down to their immediate workplace. They mutter their discontent to each other, they continue their work but their spirit is broken. With power from a union perhaps their individual voices, joined as a collective voice would bring about a call to action, and a positive change. In current times nothing anyone can say can convince me that unions are no longer necessary.

University made me question, reflect, be critical, and seek a range of perspectives before deciding my direction. It was the start of me looking beyond the obvious or what is fed to me, to notice what is given to me as ‘inevitable’ and to instead seek the possibilities and alternatives, most importantly to understand that individuals are what make the whole. I thought that this was what higher education was for when I decided to become an Education lecturer. It feels more and more as if I am actually a worker at a conveyor belt, told to deliver a product with the aim to create the same identical little cogs at the end. Push them through with as little cost as possible…stamp them with ‘graduate’ and send them out heads looking down, into the world. Students deserve so much more than that. University Staff deserve so much than that. I deserve so much more than that. The person I fight for deserves so much more than that.

I have been listening to Bob Marley albums as I type – his music so often inspires me to write. As I finish my last sentences these lyrics jump out of the speakers and as always they speak to me:

You can fool some people sometimes

But you can’t fool all the people all the time

So now we see the light

We gonna stand up for our rights

Unlike the message I was fed in my youth, I understand that it takes tremendous strength and resolve to strike. As well as having a financial knock as you lose pay and pension, the decision takes an emotional toll as you wrestle with the guilt you feel, and that you are perhaps having a negative impact on those you spend your life supporting. This emotional labour is magnified to the extreme after the year we have all faced, the long hours spent in rewriting materials for online delivery, the many hours spent in supporting students academically and emotionally, alongside a workload that has increased exponentially this year. Many are exhausted and stressed and question whether they have the energy for yet another fight, and the thought of the lies that will be told that questions our commitment to our students. Yet still many will continue to fight not just for the one, but for all of our university community and its future, because we care about every individual. I know the future that I want to be part of, and it isn’t what is being touted currently.

I get earworms a lot, I always have. Music, particularly songs, attach themselves to my brain when they resonate with how I am feeling or something I am thinking and I sing them over and over. Adverts were a favourite, but to be honest 🎶any song will do🎶 I am ashamed to say to the many artists and song writers out there, I am completely rubbish at remembering who sang or wrote a song, but give me a few words from a lyric (or even close to one) and I will sing along. To be honest, words only vaguely have to remind me of a song, and off I go. I describe it as my musical Tourette’s and close colleagues and students know me for it. I cannot help but blurt out a song in the midst of teaching or talking. Students one year actually had a bet going on how often I would sing in one session. I had warned them of my habit…and sometimes they would sing out anything I missed! Above my desk at work sits this poster which someone sent me as it reminded them of me:

The song “Tubthumping” (aka “I get knocked down…”) by British band Chumbawamba has been echoing around my brain of late. I had to look them up to remember their details – 1997 – yikes!

🎶 I get knocked down, but I get up again, You are never gonna keep me down…🎶

Sorry if that ear worm has now been transferred, but that is the way it works. This has been on replay in my head for weeks – a refrain to cry to, a refrain to rally resources to, a refrain to cry my dissent.

This lyric has resonated on so many levels in our current COVID and Brexit laden times, sung as feels appropriate as each new blunder by those in power is revealed. I have sung it often in my head as I’ve sworn at the computer during my daily Twitter scroll-through and read of the dreadful plight of those working in Early Childhood settings and the health and financial toll of government decisions. However, on a personal level it has also been a song sung with tongue in cheek, anger, frustration and despondency, knowing that I’ve sung this song hundreds of times since 1997.

I am currently teaching the very last early years specific module of the part-time work-based degree I look after. I have poured my heart and soul into preparing and delivering it, partly because it is the first time I have taught this particular module and it is its first outing online, partly because it is about early child development which is a subject I am passionate about, but mostly because these work-based students deserve it. Once a week at 5pm I start my teaching online with them – both they and I know we have 2.5 hours together. It is a very small, but perfectly formed group of early years practitioners. I look at their often tired faces smiling at me, but notice their dark-ringed eyes that have lost the sparkle that they had earlier in the day as they turned their reassuring gaze towards the small children they have been caring for. By the time they reach me their posture, and the pallor of their skin reveals the hard and stressful day at work. The song lyric often jumps unbidden into my head 🎶 I get knocked down, but I get up again…🎶 as they rise to the challenge of my questions as I teach, asking them to put theory to their practice or to make connections, or critical comments.

I am always in awe of the work-based students I teach and the commitment they give to study. I enjoy their insights and the passion they reveal for the often low-paid work they do. Many wish to improve and enhance what they deliver to our youngest children, families and communities just as I did when I engaged in a similar work-based course – ironically the first one that had run at the institution I teach in. However, this year my admiration for them runs deeper as they not only manage the additional stresses in their work but grapple with online learning and new technology too. Managing study, academic reading and assignment writing alongside work and family life is tricky enough in normal times, but add the stresses of Covid and you have the perfect storm. However, still they keep going, apologising for their quietness or the quality of their responses despite my reassurance that it is understandable given their many pressures. I am saddened by the fact that this is likely to be the last time that I will deliver early years content to work-based students in this way in a purposefully designed part-time EY course in my institution.

🎶 I get knocked down…🎶

I helped to write this module quite a few years ago alongside EY colleagues. It was at a time when we had to roll with the punches delivered by those in power. The decision had been made to stop delivering the 2.5 year Foundation Degrees in University, and we were made to change to a 4 year part time degree instead. We had pushed against this decision. Having been a working part of the sector in the past, we understood from experience that the EY workforce often lacked confidence in their academic capabilities, and knew they would dip their toe in the water for a Foundation Degree before signing up to a top-up degree. A 4-year degree course, and the cost of that would put practitioners off. However, our reasoning was ignored, and instead we started to plan an EY route to sit within a suite of work-based degrees. Suddenly we found Early Years content was cut in favour of more generic subject matter. This was cost-effective as it meant that larger groups were possible. We often fought hard for at least some EY specific teaching within this generic content – it seemed difficult for some to understand the specialised knowledge needed to work with our youngest children. A decrease in EY student numbers followed as a result, just as we predicted, and the consumerised academy demanded ways to cut costs further or cut the course. So we compromised further and the course became even more generic to meet the needs of a broader range of work-based students working with children from 0-19. We continued to fight for our Early Years Route 🎶…you are never gonna keep me down…🎶 However our fight proved unsuccessful and the EY route was told to stop recruiting. I find myself singing the refrain often to try to convince myself to keep going, that we are not yet at the end. The last of the students to gain an EY degree on our part-time course have one more year to complete their dissertation and a graduation to celebrate as their ultimate achievement.

As I have planned and started to deliver the module content the subject has become poignant. When the 4-year degree was first planned the Sutton Trust’s ‘Sound Foundations’ report was newly published and sparked the idea for a final early years specific module of the degree, before students progressed into the last year and their dissertation. The module was designed with the recognition that it was important to go back to the beginning of early childhood, to reinforce the importance of the Prime Areas of learning within the EYFS. We were all too aware that there was not enough focus on the first 3 years of a child’s life and the impact that this has on future learning and development; that our EYPS students were often removed from the baby room in order to work elsewhere in the nursery; and that schools were going to welcome 2 year olds into their classrooms without really understanding the specific learning and development needs of that age group. ‘Sound Foundations’ set out so many recommendations which resonated, alongside discussions of key pedagogical ideas based on research. We set to incorporating the same into the module – a focus on the Prime areas and brain development, the importance of context and culture with an emphasis that this early learning and development lays the foundation for all future learning.

The poignancy I felt as I started to plan and deliver this module’s last outing came from recognising how this message appears lost in our society in England. The public complain about the high cost of childcare forgetting or not understanding the importance of the quality of the practitioners delivering education and care. Good quality costs. They don’t always know of the poor pay that these caring individuals receive, the long hours that they work, or the knowledge and skills required to deliver quality care and education. Government nod in agreement with the public about the high cost of childcare, and suggest that they invest heavily in providing ‘free’ childcare without telling the truth that this does not cover the day-to-day costs of delivering the standards they and Ofsted require. They insinuate that private and voluntary providers and childminders are making money, when in truth many of these ‘businesses’ have a hand-to-mouth existence, with many putting their hands in their own pockets, or asking staff to do extra in order to continue caring for the children they hold dear. These difficulties have been magnified with the pandemic and uncertainty around finances. Settings are on the brink of financial collapse. Many are having to stay open to try and keep afloat, despite the knowledge that they risk the health of the staff they employ and the families of the children they care for, at the same time that they are being told they must remain open. Without financial support we will lose a high number of EYs settings. Will it take that to happen before the government and the public realise that the sector keeps the economy afloat by providing childcare for working parents? Will they ever realise that beyond childcare, the early childhood sector provides an education which supports a child’s future learning. Good early years provision does not force learning too early, it understands from child development and from research and experience that earlier formal teaching does not make learning for young children better.

The ‘Sound Foundations’ report (among so many others over the last decade stating the same) expressed the need for graduates who understand young children’s learning and development. I find myself supporting a group of passionate dedicated practitioners through to the end of their degree. They will join the hundreds of practitioners who have gained their early years degree through part-time work based courses in my institution, whilst holding down a job and managing family commitments. I was one of them. I know that many of those practitioners who stayed in EYs (and not escaped for higher pay and better working conditions) have made a real difference to the young children and families they care for. However, without the long requested EY workforce strategy and investment, the numbers of graduates will shrink as we have seen over the last decade. Without professional recognition, respect and support many more will leave the sector. I have witnessed the lack of understanding, recognition and respect for Early Years Education and Care in my own institution, by some teachers in different age phases, by some members of the public, by Ofsted and by government. The lack of understanding of the crucial role of the EY sector in supporting our society is perhaps a reflection of how little respect there is for the cleverness of young children. Yet they are our future – they will determine what our society becomes. They deserve the best we can give them in their earliest years in order that they can learn and develop to the best they are able, supported by high quality practitioners in a quality environment. We have been fighting for this for so, so long. I thank the young energetic voices that I hear fighting for the sector…sometimes more recently I feel I may have been knocked down once too often and I am not sure I have the energy for much more. Most of my energies will go instead into supporting a small group of wonderful early years practitioners gain their degree and reach their goal. As for the sector, I have faith that as always Early Years will rise again, after all it seems to have always been our refrain:

🎶… I get knocked down, but I get up again, You are never gonna keep me down…🎶