Vinson Preschool Report

The Education and Care of Our Children: Good Beginnings

The study has focused on twenty public school preschools and kindergartens serving not-well-off communities in NSW. A significant number of children entering preschool and kindergarten have been observed to be so disadvantaged that in the absence of intensive compensatory education and care they are destined to fail to acquire the rudiments of education.

They are positioned to become tomorrow's frustrated and rejected adults and to become fodder for the ever-expanding penal system.

The 100 preschools attached to NSW public schools have, in all respects, been found to be providing a high quality service particularly in helping children to acquire the social skills and basic knowledge they need to proceed to formal learning. Worldwide research testifies to the major difference such preparation can make to educational progress and leading a productive life with societal dividends commonly in the range of a six or seven-fold return on the cost of providing preschool. Despite that advantage, Australia has failed to follow the example of many other comparable societies that have made the education and care of young children a national priority.

The public schools have the advantage of progressively integrating their preschool programs with kindergarten and wider school activities and maintaining helpful measures begun in preschool. A major catch is that many of the problems of disadvantaged children revolve around seriously undeveloped or distorted speech and this interferes with early learning, especially reading. There is typically an eighteen months delay in receiving limited publicly provided help with these problems and a missed opportunity to rectify them at an early stage. Many principals and early education teachers have stressed the importance of locating speech therapists within clusters of public schools and DOCS funded community-based preschools. The report recommends the expenditure of $5 million per year to acquire 50 speech therapists to work in this way.

Estimates of the number of NSW four-year-olds who participate in preschools or long day care converge on approximately 85%. Research confirms that family income has a great deal to do with this pattern. The deficient funding of 800 community-based preschools is resulting in higher fees that poorer families cannot afford and endangering their children's continuing participation. Some community preschools are also losing the leadership of their specialist early education teachers, an important loss in light of both what I have seen in the public schools and worldwide experience and research. The solution is the addition of a further $90 million per year to the $76 million currently made available through DOCS. That would enable NSW to match other Australian states in offering every four-year-old two days per week of free or very low cost preschool.

Additional steps needed to bring us into line with good international practice include:

• The State Government has an obligation to see that areas of extreme social disadvantage are served by a low cost, high quality preschool. A list of eligible areas forms an appendix to the report. The integration of preschool with kindergarten programs should be a threshold requirement;

• The Commonwealth must ensure that there is an adequate supply of university-qualified early education teachers to lead preschool education;

• The co-locating of preschools and early formal education enhances the opportunities for program integration. New community based preschools as well as DET operated ones should be based at public school sites and the capital cost of their establishment should be born by the Commonwealth;

• Families whose children attend community preschools should attract the Child Care Benefit for days of attendance additional to the state-provided two days per week;

• Responsibility for administering state early education and care programs should be vested in the NSW Department of Education and Training;

• The Commonwealth, on the basis of the contributions outlined, should join with the state, or rather states, in setting uniform standards for early education and childcare and monitoring their implementation; and

• The Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), as a federal structure, should be assigned the task of designing the relevant standard setting and monitoring body.

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Last Modified: 18 May 2006