Last week Scott Morrison declared child care support was “not a welfare payment”. He’s absolutely right. It never has been.
Support for Australian families to access early education and care has always been focused on two clear goals – enabling parents to work and supporting children’s development. It’s been a bi-partisan position, based on evidence. Until now.
The Government’s plan to introduce new restrictions on access to child care, and Scott Morrison’s plan to reduce support to a “workforce participation payment” are deeply concerning.
Parents, and early education and care providers are very worried changing the activity test – which determines how much subsidised child care a family is eligible for – could push as many as 100,000 families out of the system altogether. That’s almost one in seven families. On top of this, many more stand to have their access reduced.
By linking child care to work – and only work – it devalues the importance of early education to a child’s future success. The reality is, regardless of how much parents work, early education is one of the smartest investments we can make in our future. The importance of the first five years of a child’s life should not be underestimated – 90% of a child’s brain development occurs in these vital years. Empirical evidence of the importance of early education is expansive, both in Australian and in international studies.
The study From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development summarised it well when it said that what happens during the first months and years of life is significant because it sets “either a sturdy or fragile stage for what follows.” The same study found that early education was particularly important for vulnerable children and their families – playing an important part in combating cycles of disadvantage and setting children up for a better start to primary school.
This significant finding is reinforced in the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education Project, which found that children who had not benefited from early education had poorer cognitive attainment, sociability and concentration when they started primary school.
In essence, if Scott Morrison truly wants to improve workforce participation in the long term, he needs to look not only at providing support for parents to work, but also at our children’s future in the workforce. When we focus only on the immediate economic benefits of parents returning to work, we only see a part of the picture.
A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that the value of the return from investing in quality early education and care, could exceed the return from increasing parents’ workforce participation. The report found that investing in our children, especially vulnerable children, would boost our economy by $23.3 billion by 2050. If there was ever an indicator that early education and care must to be viewed as an enabler of future economic growth rather than a social handout, this would be it.
There is no real division between child care, early education and school – children learn from the moment they are born, and a true education system needs to recognise that learning starts long before school. It is for this reason that Labor introduction of the National Quality Framework, a fundamental reform to ensure that children receive a quality evidence-based education in the early years – as far away from baby sitting as it’s possible to get.
Around the world, future-focused governments are recognising the long term benefits of early education, and are investing in quality programs.
In contrast, Scott Morrison is walking a dangerous path when he paints early education and care as nothing more than a “workforce participation payment” and ignores the overwhelming evidence of its long term importance to children and our economy. What is even more troubling is that lower-income families and vulnerable children – the very children and families that stand to gain the most from early education and care – would be the first ones pushed out of the system under tighter work-based child care restrictions.
No one disputes the importance of child care in helping parents – especially women – to re-enter the workforce. We want to see parents supported to seek work, find work and keep work, and child care is integral in this process. However this can’t come at the expense of the interests of children, and it is so important to get the balance right.
Early education and care needs be good for parents and good for children – it doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition, and Scott Morrison shouldn’t make it one.
Labor will be closely looking at the Government’s families package to see if they get the balance right.