G8 driven to lift standards
Madgwick: Childcare a profession
G8 EDUCATION’S Julie Madgwick is drawing on 30 years of experience in the early childhood sector, including a stint in the Cayman Islands, as she works to lift quality standards across the company’s 500 Australian centres.
Ms Madgwick was appointed at the start of this year as the first Head of Early Learning and Education at the Varsity Lakes-based childcare giant.
Her role is to act as a “conduit” between the support office and the early childhood teachers, ensuring they are working towards the National Quality Standard, which focuses on achieving outcomes for children through highquality educational programs.
Ms Madgwick, who prior to joining G8 worked as a consultant in the sector, said her experience revolved around scaling education systems in countries including the United Arab Emirates and the Cayman Islands.
She was responsible in the Cayman Islands for a major reform project as head of the Ministry of Education’s Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Unit.
”I actually set up the whole early childhood system in the Cayman Islands,” she said.
“In the Cayman Islands, early childhood was a few people minding children and it was unstructured.”
Ms Madgwick, who was in the British Overseas Territory between 2011 and 2013, said the sector required a complete overhaul.
“We visited every single early childhood service and every school over a period of weeks,” she said.
“Before we did anything, I learned what everyone wanted, it is exactly what I have done here because it worked.”
She said the Cayman Islands Strategic Plan for Education 2012-2017 is still being implemented.
“We wrote curriculum, developed a framework for centre approvals, and set a standard so to be approved as a centre you had to meet and exceed that standard.”
Ms Madgwick said while the Cayman Islands was considerably smaller than Australia, the principles of scaling education systems remained the same.
However, she does not believe in a top down approach.
“If you can do it across a big organisation, you can do the same things … and tailor them to the specific services and communities, because I also do not believe in one size fits all.”
She said another aspect of G8 she was focused on was breaking up the “silos” that exist across the company, which has more than 20 different brands.
“Previously … there were a lot of silos and within each of the brands are amazing services and there are ones that have issues that are working towards National Quality Standards,” she said.
“My role is to bring all those people together so everyone knows we are all one organisation, so that is part of the transformation of G8.”
She said it was also vitally important that employees in the sector were treated as professionals.
“In Australia, early childhood services were set up, basically, so women could work. It was not valued, it was called an industry,” Ms Madgwick said.
“To me industry is making cars and screwing wheels on cars and we build brains in early childhood.
“Those first 1000 days are crucial for a child’s ongoing learning and development.
“If they don’t get the foundations built then it can be detrimental to their future learning.
“We want the sector to be seen as education in its own right and making it a profession.”