David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's obvious that there is universal agreement across this House that early childhood education is critical in developing the best for every child. I just want to point out some pretty obvious facts that have been distorted by the other side.

We are funding compulsory preschool of 15 hours a week, with $428 million this year and $444 million next year. There are also negotiations already afoot to make sure that the money actually leads to children attending preschool. You don't get any benefit from funding; you get benefit from going to preschool for those 15 hours a week. As the minister, the member for Wannon, so accurately pointed out, the attendance figures for 15 hours a week of preschool are notoriously bad in many states who are quite happy to accept the funds but don't ensure the children turn up for preschool. In some states it's at low as 40 per cent—in many it's 50 per cent—and the more remote and disadvantaged areas are the ones with the lowest attendance. That's why there are negotiations going on. In fact, the federal government never paid for preschool—it was solely a state responsibility—up until 2008, so we want to make sure that states are not taking the money without delivering the service.

Everyone understands that early learning influences the transition into school, but a lot of the argument is based on overseas experience. We have evidence, which many on the other side are familiar with, that attendance at preschool in the year before your schooling improves your NAPLAN score in year 3. There are lots of figures showing that going to preschool before your schooling means you are much more likely to finish and graduate out of school, less likely to drop out from school, and more likely to have better outcomes.

But there is nothing wrong with your early learning being delivered in a family daycare centre rather than a formal preschool situation or with your own family. In fact, there is a lot of evidence coming out of Europe, from Germany and Italy—I've got the articles here; I can show you later, Mr Deputy Speaker—that in some quarters extra formal daycare leads to a lower IQ down the track and that there is less beneficial social and emotional wellbeing and more aggressiveness in children that are in very long daycare. So we've got to be careful how much we take on as a state and how much we let parents interact with their children.

The evidence is that the benefit is greatest to the child where the parents aren't delivering that sort of one-on-one stimulation, play, interaction, early reading, looking at images and speech development. In remoter areas English might be a first language or a second language or third language. We have lots of migrant parents in this country who aren't fluent in English and theirs are the kids who will get the biggest benefit. That's what our policy is all focused on and that's why we are arguing with the states to get the attendance figures up, and we'll deliver the money.

The other thing that is not very well appreciated is a lot of these figures about attendance in the years before school are based on the European experience. Children in a lot of countries in Europe—and I've got some figures here—do not start school at 4½ or just turning five like here in Australia; they start at seven and six, so the two years before school are actually older than what we are advocating here in Australia. In Finland, school starts at seven. In the UK, it has been an issue in the press there that children who have just turned five shouldn't be let to go to school because they start their school in the middle of their summer, or our winter, whereas we start school in January, in the middle of their winter. In Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece and Hungary, they start school between six and seven, so preschool for them is when you're five and six, not four and three. I mean, we're not all going to end up rocket scientists and with PhDs because we have our children in preschool at the age of three.

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