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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 7 Hansard (22 September) . . Page.. 1973 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

of the community in relation to this matter and backed off from his apparent attraction to some of the things that were said by the Auditor-General. Mind you, had I been the Minister, I would have backed off quickly too, because the heat of debate was rising very quickly and it was very clear to me and others in this place that there needed to be an assessment of our preschool systems in the cool light of day. I am pleased to have worked with Ms Tucker on this very important inquiry.

Ms Tucker mentioned the cost benefits of preschools. On page 1 of the report some interesting numbers are mentioned. Professor Graeme Vimpani of Newcastle University calculated that every dollar not spent on the early years of a child's life in the provision of quality education costs our society $8.95 a year until the child reaches 27 years. That is a pretty impressive pat on the back for preschool education, in my view. The High/Scope Perry program in the USA estimated that the public saved $7.16 for every dollar spent on the program. Those numbers are significant in themselves, because if one wants to use the economic rationalist model, they really draw attention to the economic value of a strong preschool education.

A good inclusive and progressive community is one that bases itself on a good education system. A good education system is incomplete if it does not have a strong early childhood education and, in particular, preschool education. In the ACT I understand that 90 per cent of four-year-olds access our preschool system. That is to be applauded. There is no question that the access to our preschool system in the ACT is good by any standard. We have to ensure that we maintain that very high standard. If we do not, we will start to run into the difficulties that are created with inadequate education systems.

Many interstate observers would be very jealous of the preschool services available here in the ACT. But let us not get into the argument of averaging and lowest common denominators and those sorts of things which seem to be an attraction for this Government. Benchmarking seems to be a theme that they are enthusiastic about. I do not particularly want to see benchmarking of any of our systems if it means that we downgrade the service to the community. I fear that that would be the case if benchmarking was seen as an attractive model for preschools.

One of the most revealing factors which came up during the inquiry was the role that access played in the success of our preschool system. If one looked at the preschools with one eye, the rationalist eye, one could say that the buildings were not used as efficiently as they might be if they were full of children and each class was full to the brim, instead of in some cases being not so full, but at the end of the day we have to accept in this place that those buildings will never be used to their fullest and most efficient capacity. Teachers will never be used to 100 per cent of their capacity. If they were to be, we would end up with a system less accessible and the numbers which some of our colleagues interstate envy in relation to access to preschool systems would be upset. We have to accept that if we want to maintain our preschool system as a very accessible system which is attractive to parents and produces the goods in our education system, then we have to accept that some costs go with that. I think the community is prepared to pay those costs, because they value preschool education, as they value the education system generally.

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