Ive been reading the Australia 21 Advance Australia Fair? report on inequality in Australia australia21.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Final-InequalityinAustraliaRepor-2.pdf. Its a long and detailed report, but I thought it worth posting the following section; we rank 32nd out of 34 OECD countries in our investment in early childhood education, spending just 0.3% of our GDP. In comparison, the UK, spends 1% of GDP: [Australia must] invest nationally in early childhood development, especially for disadvantaged groups. Experts agree that the most effective and cost-effective way of increasing equality of opportunity is by providing high quality early childhood education in the first five years of life. As already noted, quality preschool education has a bigger influence on children’s literacy and numeracy skills at ages 11 and 14 than their primary school education. Early childhood development is vital for building healthy and prosperous communities. Interventions improve not only physical and cognitive development but also social and emotional development (WHO 2007). What children experience during the early years sets a critical foundation for their entire life-course, influencing basic learning, school success, economic participation and social citizenry. Interventions that integrate the different dimensions of child development are particularly successful. These result in sustained improvements in physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development while simultaneously reducing the immediate and future burden of disease, especially for those who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged (Engle et al 2007). Learning experiences in early childhood are thus foundational and uniquely important for social mobility, yet in modern Australia children of disadvantaged and low socioeconomic parents, including and especially in Indigenous communities, have minimal or restricted access to quality early childhood development services. While Australia has paid some attention to this issue, many believe that it has not been adequately or systematically addressed. This issue is taken up by Anne Hollonds in her comments in Part B p. 54. When Britain introduced fully government-funded preschooling for every child for 15 hours a week ten years ago, it raised the cost of early childhood education from 0.5 per cent of GDP to 1 per cent. By comparison, Australia invests just 0.3 per cent of GDP on early childhood education, ranking us 32nd out of 34 OECD countries. We can and must do better than that. The cost of investing in a free or subsidised early childhood education program would be offset by an increase in female workforce participation, the creation of a better educated workforce, and a reduction in welfare dependence. The previous federal government committed $1 billion to subsidising preschool places under its universal access scheme, but the funding runs out at the end of 2014, and at time of writing there is no confirmation on whether it will be renewed. Research needs to be done on the best ways to improve and scale up early childhood education in Australia, especially among the disadvantaged (Brown 2014).
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 08:00:01 +0000
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