The OECD has released a report comparing the early childhood policies for 20 countries, including Australia. According to the blurb for the OECD report, 'early childhood policy' covers not just preschool education, but also child care and social and family policies.
The media has picked up on two points in particular, which are spending on preschool education and teacher qualifications in preschools. Australia fares badly in both cases. Apparently, we spend 0.1% of our GDP on preschool, the least of any of the surveyed countries. (I assume this combines goverment and private spending.) Also, only 57% of the staff in private preschools have a teaching degree, and 55% of workers in child care centres have a diploma. (A diploma in what? you may ask, but unfortunately I couldn't find any more details.)
Fiona Stanley is not happy with this situation, and neither is Julie Bishop. Both have called for preschooling to be made compulsory. (Preschooling is a state responsibility.) But is there really a problem here? And if so, is compulsory preschooling really a solution to the problem?
The OECD report discusses spending and teacher qualifications. But surely we are interested in the quality of preschool learning and care, and how these affect the development of our children throughout their primary, secondary and tertiary education and their success in industry. It doesn't seem obvious to me that there is a strong connection between, say, spending on preschools and later learning. First, while we know that early childhood experiences (at ages 5 and lower) are extremely important, we still don't really know how they impact later learning and development, or which experiences improve a child's prospects. Second, many parents may be educating their own children --- in which case preschool spending (and even teacher qualification) is irrelevant. As we can see, these two factors alone weaken the connection between preschool spending and later learning.
One final comment. According to The Australian's article, countries such as the US and Britain are spending 5 times as much (and Mexico 6 times as much) on preschool education (presumably in GDP terms). Are these countries' kids really 5 times smarter and more emotionally capable than Australian kids at the start of school?
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