Page 1167 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 28 March 2017
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The study also showed, of course, that the benefits of this preschool flowed through to their end of school exams. Children who attended two to three years of early childhood education did much better across science, maths and a range of different English indicators.
While the size and quality of this study has not been attempted in Australia, we know from Australian research in the longitudinal study of Australian children that early learning readies children for school and that the benefits persist. According to the Melbourne Institute, Australian children that attended quality early childhood education the year before full-time school have been shown to achieve higher results across all areas of year 3 NAPLAN—numeracy, reading, spelling, writing, and grammar and punctuation—and are up to 40 per cent ahead of their peers who had not participated in early childhood education.
The research is very cogent on the benefits of early childhood education. The minister mentioned the research that had been done around PISA testing as well. That is why the Labor government at the time wanted to increase the enrolment, attendance and duration of children’s participation in preschool. The universal access program has been highly successful.
Because of this federal government investment, preschool enrolments and the number of children accessing 15 hours or more in preschool has increased dramatically. The proportion of four and five-year-old children accessing 15 hours of preschool nationally grew from 23 per cent in 2008 to 86.7 per cent in 2015 for four and five year olds.
Participation in early childhood education in the ACT has remained high because we have a commitment to providing free high-quality preschool through our government schools and through non-government schools as well. The universal access program has also been highly successful in lifting the participation rate and the duration children spend in preschool in the year before full-time schooling here.
While the ACT did not provide 15 hours of preschool in 2008, the number of children enrolled in 15 hours now has increased. As the minister mentioned, up to 96 per cent are attending. We have achieved so much, but we cannot stop now. The national partnership agreement on universal access to early childhood education expires at the end of this calendar year, the end of the fourth consecutive short-term agreement on universal access.
But we know that in 2015, when the Productivity Commission inquired into child care and early childhood learning, they recommended:
The Australian Government should continue to provide per child payments to the states and territories for universal access to a preschool program of 15 hours per week for 40 weeks per year.
Then we come back to the review into the universal access scheme. Deloitte Access Economics undertook the review. They found that:
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