The NSW and Queensland Children’s Services commissioners’ ‘Blueprint’ for child care, What about the kids? Policy directions for improving the experiences of young children in a changing world, released last month, calls for policy improvements to support the care and education of all babies and young children.

The ‘Blueprint’ is welcome for highlighting the alarming developmental outcomes for many children under existing childcare and early development arrangements and the eroding quality of early childhood services. 

For too long, calls to put children at the centre of the debate have been eclipsed by a focus on funding and provision issues. Certainly, increased provision for child care is important, but provision and quality must go hand in hand. Increasing threats to healthy development mean that children need more nurturing, better care and earlier education than at any time in the past.  

To date, lack of coordinated planning for young children’s care and education has resulted in the current child care “shambles”.  Planning and building child care centres has been left largely to the commercial sector. Family Day Care is dependent on mothers being willing to care for children in their homes and having a house that meets certain safety requirements.  

Decades of research show the benefits of strong, rich early childhood programs on children’s development and learning. All children need access to quality programs provided by qualified staff.

As pointed out in the Blueprint, quality childcare can be of particular benefit to families affected by poverty and disadvantage. In some disadvantaged communities, child care or preschool centres provide the only safe, consistent and thoughtful early childhood experiences that children have prior to starting school. They are the only places where children are fed properly and have access to early literacy experiences including drawing, painting and reading.

Quality early childhood programs also boost early development and learning and can help children reach key developmental milestones and close learning gaps.

However, as the Blueprint highlights, the quality of early childhood programs is eroding. Early childhood services are in crisis. Costs have spiralled out of control, places are impossible to find in some areas and quality varies dramatically. There are also serious shortages of child care practitioners and early childhood teachers.

In reality, child care places will be in short supply until planning issues are addressed. Current processes of funding and building centres are way out of kilter with need and demand. But planning early childhood centres is no simple matter as population shifts and community needs change, as we have long seen in the school sector. Schools that once had a thousand children end up with a hundred or so enrolments and close.

The new Commonwealth plan to have all four year olds participate in an educational preschool program in the year before school has been widely applauded, but needs careful thought and planning. At present there is no way every child could be placed in a “preschool” education program with a qualified early childhood teacher. There are simply not enough early education “places” and early childhood teachers to go around. For a start, universities must immediately boost childhood teacher training if universal preschool for four year olds is to get off the ground in the next decade, let alone the next year or so.

There is no doubt that quality early childhood care and education is expensive. Child care fees already rival those of the most expensive independent schools. Imagine the cost increases if all child care centres as the Blueprint advocates  also had to provide qualified early childhood teachers or child-staff ratios of one adult to three babies rather than the common one adult to five babies.

All children need quality early childhood programs if they are to thrive. Building “seamless” or integrated early childhood care and education programs won’t be easy but it is necessary. Establishment and operational costs are high but the academic outcomes are more important than the high short term-costs to government, community and taxpayers.

Alison Elliott is ACER's Research Director, Early Childhood Education. Email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

What about the kids? Policy directions for improving the experiences of young children in a changing world, is available online at the NSW Commission for Children and Young People website.

« Back to eNews