bitchy | Princess Kate’s Early Years ‘awareness raising’ was praised in Parliament

In January and February of this year, the Princess of Wales “launched” the latest variation of her “awareness-raising campaign” for Early Years. Every year for the past four years, she’s been relaunching this dumb thing, which always amounts to the same thing: the Early Years are important, did you know those years are important, let me tell you that they’re very important. That’s it. Kate has never tied these campaigns to a fundraiser for any of the child-development programs which are being slashed. Kate has never tied these campaigns to direct action of any kind. This year, people finally started criticizing her for her busy-work. The busy-work has always lacked substance, lacked urgency, lacked direction, lacked a mission. Credible experts were actually fed up, and American outlets even lodged some pointed criticism at Princess BusyWork. Kate hasn’t even mentioned Early Years anything in months, right? Well, good news – a government committee cited Kate for special acknowledgement for… raising awareness.

Kate Middleton is being celebrated by U.K. Parliament. The Princess of Wales, 41, was recognized for raising awareness around the importance of the early years in the House of Commons Education Committee’s “Support for childcare and the early years” report, released last week. Princess Kate got a shout-out for the ongoing work of her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, established in June 2021 and the most significant step in her long-term mission to help kids and parents.

“The Princess of Wales has done important work to raise the profile of the Early Years through her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. Its 2020 report ‘State of the Nation: Understanding Public Attitudes to the Early Years’ stressed the importance of elevating the importance of the early years period in the public consciousness,” the Education Committee said in the paper, published July 18.

“The ECEC sector is independent, multi-faceted and diverse, and does not always benefit from the same structural lines of communication through local authorities as the school sector. More outreach and strong channels of communication between the sector and the Government are needed to ensure that practitioners feel both valued and heard,” it continued. The committee also suggested that change is needed to improve low morale among early years practitioners, particularly around pay.

[From People]

“More outreach and strong channels of communication between the sector and the Government are needed to ensure that practitioners feel both valued and heard.” See, Kate can’t even do that. She can’t even use her position to center the underpaid, undervalued early-years practitioners. Because she’s too busy taking credit for their work and pretending that she alone is “raising awareness.” Anyway, this is the kind of treading-water gold star that bureaucracies love to give. Kate isn’t challenging anyone in government, she’s not bringing up uncomfortable questions about the lack of funding for children’s programs or working families. She’s seen as a good little girl who does safe little nonsense projects and everyone pats her on the head and says “how delightfully apolitical, how unimportant.”

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Kensington Palace, Cover Images.