Quality Early Education for All

In conclusion
Early education has substantial and sustained impacts on children’s learning, development and wellbeing. It is a
key strategy for mitigating the socio-economic gradient that so strongly influences children’s progress at school
and their trajectories over their lives.
The NQF provides a good foundation to set minimum standards for quality early education – although
implementation of its assessments remains slow and quality is variable, indicating that further work is required to
maximise the impact of this important reform.
High-quality early education must become a core component of contemporary systems for achieving positive
learning and development for Australian children, alongside and of equivalent value to child and family health and
school education.
The benefits of the current investment in the ECEC sector will be muted if higher levels of quality are not
achieved, particularly for the most disadvantaged children.
“The advantages gained from
effective early interventions
are best sustained when they
are followed by continued
high quality learning
experiences ... [and] due to
dynamic complementarity, or
synergy, early investments
must be followed by later
investments if maximum
value is to be realised”
HECKMAN 2008
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