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Figure 2: Types of child care attended by children, percentage of all children in child careNote: Multiple response question.Figure 3: Informal carers looking after the child, per centNote:’Other relative’ category includes step-parents.Informal child care was most commonly provided bythe other parent of the child (55.1 per cent of children) 2 ,a grandmother (44.6 per cent), or another relative(33.8 per cent). In less than 3 per cent of cases, only theprimary carer looked after the child — see Figure 3.Child readiness for schoolQuality early-childhood education is critical to ensuringyoung children have opportunities for early learning,development and socialisation. State, Territory andCommonwealth Governments have committed to aClosing the Gap target of 95 per cent enrolment (andattendance, where it is possible to measure) of Indigenousfour-year-old children in remote communities in earlychildhood education by 2013. While current data arelimited, the best available data source, the NationalPreschool Census, suggests that a high proportion ofIndigenous children living in remote communities wereenrolled in a preschool program in the year before fulltimeschooling in 2010 and that this proportion rose from87 per cent in 2009 to 90 per cent in 2010.Footprints in Time data can be used to examine therelationship between preschool attendance andchildren’s readiness for school. Children in the K cohortwere asked to complete “Who Am I?”, a direct childassessment measuring cognitive processes underlyingearly literacy and numeracy skills to determine readinessfor learning. This assesses the child’s ability to draw andcopy shapes, numbers, letters and words. The maximumscore a child can achieve is 44. The children alsocompleted the Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary Test toassess their expressive vocabulary. The maximum score achild can achieve in the Renfrew test is 50.2 This question included response options ‘other parent’, ‘other parent living elsewhere’, ‘step mother’ and ‘step father’. As ‘other parent’ was the firstlisted option, respondents may have nominated that category regardless of whether the ‘other parent’ was living in the same household.12 Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children | Key Summary Report from Wave 3