Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak on this motion today, because recently I met with a number of childcare operators: the Camden Park Child Care Centre, the Camden Community Centre and the Forbes Children's Centre. I also met with the local kindergarten in West Beach, where my children went—and Rosa and the team do a great job there. These operators are mainly women who are all very passionate about education for children, as we all are. It was great to discuss with them the work, what they do with their local kindergarten and the high-quality guidance they give the children and the benefit to their families.

I also had the Assistant Minister for Education, Sussan Ley, in my electorate with the industry roundtable, again listening to what people had to say about the importance of education. We are committed to education, especially early childhood learning. We have heard of the $406 million that we have committed for 15 hours of preschool per week until 2015. We have also heard how Labor did not allocate one cent to extend the preschool national partnerships beyond December this year. So there is a distinct difference in the two approaches. Overall we are investing close to $30 billion in childcare fee assistance over the next four years to ensure that delivers maximum value for Australian families and taxpayers.

Just going back a step as to why early childhood learning is important, we have heard a lot of reports and evidence and it is fairly conclusive. Recently there was a study by the University of London and the University of Oxford on influences of student's development from ages 11 to 14 and how high-quality preschool shows beneficial outcomes 10 years after their experiences in early years—in particular, better results in maths, science and English and better social behaviour at age 14. We have also heard, in such studies, of students who succeeded against the odds who were helped by parents, friends and, importantly, their communities—and through this they had installed higher aspirations. Again this importance of the parents and the home learning environment is something that should not be forgotten.

Just back to some other studies that I want to touch on too in terms of language development in the early childhood years: there was a study in Northern Ireland, and also in England, where by the time that the children were 11 those that had a very strong early childhood development program gained better results in English and maths at those ages. Children who attended high quality preschools were 2.4 times more likely in English and 3.4 times more likely in maths to attain the grade at age 11 than those without preschool. The body of evidence extends to the World Bank, where they have also looked at evaluating programs and the benefits for children, families and communities in terms of higher levels of social and emotional functioning.

Why is this important for today's motion? As a parent with young children, who have just finished their early childhood years, I was not fully aware of the importance of the early childhood years in terms of their development in literacy and maths, and it made me think about this in a bit more detail. I took some interest in going to Fraser Mustard, who has sadly passed away but who was a world expert in this field. I could not recall the South Australian state Labor government actually promoting this to parents with young children like me. And I thought that was a deficiency in what they were wheeling out in that respect. We needed to know more as parents about the benefits and how we could influence our children and help educate our children with that home environment being so important, as well as selecting good early childhood learning.

I would like that to be put on the record as a change that state governments should undertake to get that message out to parents in a far better way than they have in the past. As we heard my good colleague the member for Higgins talk about, the Productivity Commission and following it is a line to our commitment to make childcare more affordable, flexible and accessible. We have heard a number of great submissions and comments from families and childcare centres around Australia to make a better system going forward as part of our overall strategy.

Just going back to the issue of early learning languages in terms of childhood development: we have committed $10 million to test the effectiveness of providing preschool children with exposure to a language other than English through online learning programs. When we have signed major free trade agreements with massive trading partners of Australia, it is so important that we understand their culture and their language. This is another example of our commitment not just to early childhood learning but to how it follows through to a better society.

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