Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The State of early learning in Australia 2019 report was released about a half an hour ago in this building. It's an important overview for both sides of this chamber and for the general public to understand exactly where early learning and childcare services are in Australia. It makes some really handy international comparisons, as well. Australia's record of funding—interestingly, it is primarily privately provided—is relatively unique, with probably Australia and Canada following that model. But the outcomes can then be followed not only through the AED census, which 94 per cent of Australian prep children participate in, but even later. When we look at PISA scores, we can attach those scores to whether those students were or were not part of early learning. It wouldn't come as any great surprise that as one moves away from the major cities there's a greater issue around access, attendance and enrolment. More importantly, when we divide the society up into quintiles we are often trying to see the benefit to society of early learning and child care, and making sure that opportunities are afforded, particularly, to those in the lowest quintile.

We're pretty lucky to have the census that's performed, because it gives every community—in fact, every postcode in Australia—the chance to identify the proportion of the population that is either vulnerable or at risk. They have five domains—they're pretty basic and it's all performed by prep teachers around Australia—looking at communication, language and social, physical and emotional development of children. Some would argue that it is a little late in the piece. At five years of age a fair bit of opportunity to intervene has already been missed.

There's pretty much agreement on both sides that while a previous Labor government came up with a preschool check under Medicare, often referred to by some as a preschool full lube and oil change, it was a little bit late in the process and was taken up mostly by the wealthy families who knew that the item existed. The real point here is that in a universal system like Medicare, and in early learning itself, we need to make sure that we are absolutely focused on the children who benefit from it most.

The next few stats I'm going to provide are not well-known. We're having a discussion about the importance of moving from four-year-olds going to preschool to having, for three-year-olds, a second provision of early learning and preschool in particular—not just attending child care—which has shown different outcomes in different countries. In countries that can mobilise the lowest quintile and get them into that additional preschool year, there are undoubted benefits by the age of 15. That's not the case in countries that can't do it, like Australia. In Australia, for three-year-olds there is just a one-point PISA difference, which is obviously not significant, between children who had a second year and those who didn't. There is a simple reason for this. Those who got the second year of preschool were all moderately wealthy, and there are easy-to-access childcare services in and around our major cities. We know that those from highly functional families have the least to gain by being taken from a functional family unit and being placed in preschool. (Time expired)