January 2026: Industry Reflection

An industry reflection for early childhood leaders – January 2026

The beginning of a new year in early childhood rarely feels slow.

For many leaders, it feels like hitting the ground running. Orientations are underway. New children arrive. Families step into services for the first time, often carrying hope, nerves, and significant transitions. Educators are settling into new rooms, new routines, and new working relationships with children they are just beginning to know.

The year doesn’t ease in gently. It begins in motion.

Alongside this familiar busyness, many leaders are also navigating increasing unpredictability. Extreme weather events, heatwaves, storms, flooding, poor air quality, have become part of the landscape. Plans change quickly. Routines are disrupted. Decisions are made in real time, always with children’s safety and wellbeing at the centre. These conditions highlight the constant requirement for early childhood leaders to be agile and responsive, to expect the unexpected, and to adapt calmly to whatever shows up.

This is happening on top of what many leaders are already carrying from the year just lived.

A period of public scrutiny.

Rapid change.

Ongoing workforce pressures.

Decisions made quickly, often with incomplete information.

In 2025, much of the sector found itself in the spotlight, with conversations happening about early childhood rather than with the people leading it every day. For those in leadership roles, this didn’t stay at a policy or media level. It showed up in services, in teams, and in ongoing conversations about capacity, morale, and sustainability.

It also showed up in the emotional load leaders carried, often quietly, as they worked to hold steady while everything around them felt fast-moving and uncertain.

And now, here we are, at the beginning of another year.

It’s understandable if this moment feels mixed. Motivation sits alongside fatigue. Commitment sits alongside caution. Many leaders carry a deep sense of responsibility to children, families, and teams, while also recognising that the pace and complexity of the work may not slow.

And yet, in the midst of all this activity, something important is already happening.

Children are forming new relationships. Families are learning whether they feel safe, welcomed, and seen. Educators are building trust with children through everyday moments of care, play, and connection. These early days matter deeply. They shape children’s sense of belonging, families’ confidence in partnership, and teams’ experiences of working together.

In a sea of things leaders don’t control, policy shifts, public narratives, workforce shortages, weather events, this is where leadership influence lives. In the culture created within services. In the tone set during busy mornings and challenging transitions.In how supported educators feel as they get to know their children. In how calmly and confidently families are held through change and uncertainty.

This is the heart of early childhood leadership.

It’s also why leadership in this sector has never been solely about systems, plans, or compliance. At its core, early childhood leadership is relational work. It requires judgement, emotional steadiness, and presence, particularly when conditions are complex or unsettled.

These capacities aren’t strengthened by pushing harder or doing more.

They are strengthened by pausing.

One of the risks at the beginning of the year is moving straight into reaction mode, responding to urgency, solving problems, and managing daily demands, without first pausing to orient ourselves. When external noise has been loud for a long time, it becomes easy to lose touch with an internal sense of direction.

Pausing at the beginning of the year matters. But pausing once is rarely enough.

Leadership doesn’t move in a straight line. Even with strong intentions, leaders drift. Competing priorities emerge. New pressures arrive. Old habits resurface. This isn’t failure it’s the reality of leading in a complex, relational system.

For many leaders, what supports sustainability is not another rigid plan or checklist, but a reflective structure, something that allows for regular check-ins across the year. Moments to pause and ask: 

Am I still leading in the way I intended?

What has my attention right now?

What needs to shift so I can stay connected to what matters most?

Clarity in leadership is not something that’s set once at the beginning of the year.

It’s something leaders return to.

And when leaders stay connected to their purpose, their values, and the everyday impact they are having, children, families, teams, and communities feel it, often in quiet, powerful ways that don’t make headlines, but make all the difference.

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