Quality Early Education for All

after adjusting for circumstances. Preschool quality is particularly relevant for children whose mothers were
early school leavers, and for children who have not been exposed to a rich home learning environment
(Taggart et al, 2015).
• Burchinal et al (2010) found substantially higher impacts on children’s outcomes in classrooms that were
rated high-quality. For instance, children in classrooms rated highly for ‘instructional support’ scored over
three times higher on expressive language.
Research suggests that children experiencing higher levels of disadvantage benefit most from higher quality early
education, and require a greater level of intensity. Pianta notes: “preschool in the United States narrows the
achievement gap by perhaps only 5 per cent rather than the 30 per cent to 50 per cent that research suggests
might be possible on a large scale if we had high-quality programs” (Pianta et al, 2009, p. 65).
“Programs in low SES areas that include vulnerable children should be model programs of the highest quality”
(Cloney, et al, 2015), but are currently the least likely to be meeting the NQS, particularly in the crucial educative
component. 4
The foundations for future life and learning
Quality early childhood education is also vital for building the social and emotional skills that are key to
succeeding at school and employability in the long term. In the recent Skills Outlook 2015: ‘Youth, Skills and
Employability’, the OECD cited a lack of social and emotional skills as a key barrier to employment, including for
low-skill jobs.
The Centre for the Developing Child at Harvard University points to the importance of the early years for
developing these skills, as well as children’s executive functioning, the cognitive and life skills that require working
memory, mental flexibility and self-control. Executive functioning, they suggest, underpins school achievement,
positive behaviours, good health and successful transition to work. Development of executive functioning starts
early:
“The rudimentary signs of these capacities (e.g., focusing, attention) emerge during the first year of
life. By age 3, most children are already using executive function skills in simple ways (e.g.,
remembering and following simple rules). Ages 3-5 show a remarkable burst of improvement in the
proficiency of these skills (e.g., increased impulse control and cognitive flexibility)” (Centre on the
Developing Child, 2016, p. 8).
Given that children develop these skills through “their relationships, the activities they have opportunities to
engage in, and the places in which they live, learn, and play” high-quality early education and care has a crucial
role to play in supporting the development of crucial capabilities for life and learning (CDC, 2016; CDC, 2011).
Return on investment
“It is no longer viable to take ever increasing amounts of taxation from the public to deal with the ever increasing
impact of failing to intervene early” (Allen and Smith, 2008,p. 113).
Governments at all levels have competing priorities, and need to make complex and often challenging fiscal
decisions about where to invest in order to maximise impact.
The strongest, and most frequently cited, return on investment data comes from a handful of intensive programs
from the US, all implemented in the 1970s and 1980s in very specific circumstances (Table 1).
4 Biddle and Seth-Purdie note that quality standards prior to the introduction of the NQS “were not adequate to mitigate
developmental vulnerability and that [long day care], at the time, may have been harmful” (2013, p. i).
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