Why centre-based childcare fails our young kids

Parents need real choices for childcare, including the option to be subsidised to stay home, says Judith Sloan. Pictures: iStock

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It’s a well-worn cliche: our children are the future. But when it comes to young children in childcare, the effects on those children are often ignored or are (mis) portrayed as overwhelmingly positive. In any case, the central concerns of studies are the impact on mothers and the boost to the economy.

What if it turns out that long daycare is actually harmful to many children and that the consequences will play out for the rest of their lives?

Can the case be made that falling school performance and the rising participation of young children in the National Disability Insurance Scheme are partly related to long hours in centre-based childcare from an early age?

The advocates and beneficiaries of the childcare industry, no doubt, would bristle at the suggestion that childcare could damage our young ones. We need only to see how the federal Department of Education portrays the industry, preferring the term early childhood education and care.

According to the blurb, “ECEC benefits children, families and the Australian economy. Quality ECEC lays the foundation for lifelong development and learning (and) leads to better health, education and employment outcomes later in life … Access to affordable ECEC means parents and carers can work, train, study and volunteer. This in turn boosts the Australian economy.”

Take it from me, all these sentences are mere assertions unrelated to any serious research findings.

In fact, most of the so-called research in this area is extremely poor quality, lacking proper control groups and failing to account for the many reasons some children thrive, and others don’t.

It often combines large age ranges – zero to five – where common sense tells us that the impact on babies and toddlers is likely to be very different from that on preschool children aged three and four. It’s simply advocacy to support the case for more government spending on subsidising childcare fees.

It’s why the Quebec studies have been so consequential because they use high-quality data and the most sophisticated estimation techniques.

Between 1997 and 2000, Quebec rolled out a program that offered universal flat-fee childcare to all children in the province. This led to a rapid expansion in the provision of childcare. Studies comparing the outcomes of children in Quebec with those in the rest of Canada have established some alarming outcomes. The social development of children in Quebec deteriorated. Comparing the children aged two to four who had been part of the program with their older siblings who had not revealed a greater prevalence of anxiety, hyperactivity and aggression in the former group.

The gold-standard study in this area was authored by Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan and appeared in the American Economic Journal in 2019. Their conclusion was “the Quebec policy had a lasting negative impact on non-cognitive skills. At older ages, program exposure is associated with worsened health and life satisfaction, and increased rates of criminal activity … In contrast, we find no consistent impact on their cognitive skills.”

One reason given for these disturbing findings is that the rapid rollout of the program led to a marked deterioration in the quality of childcare offerings. In fact, the most common term used in the advocacy literature is quality: the concession is made that it is only quality childcare that has beneficial effects.

Jason Clare: Minister for Housing; Minister for Homelessness; Minister for Small Business Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

Brown University economics professor Emily Oster, a strident advocate of centre-based childcare, readily admits that quality matters. But her definition of quality varies from others. According to her, quality should be “measured by whether providers are responsive to children, whether they read and talk to them, whether they hit them (this is very bad) and whether they respond to their basic needs like diapering and feeding”.

But there are other definitions of quality. Features of the premises, staff-to-children ratios and the qualifications of staff often are listed. Sensitive and positive caregiving also is mentioned.

The government regulations focus on the measurable, even if they may be poor indicators of real quality. Note here that there are a disproportionate number of recently arrived migrants working in our childcare industry. With limited English, it’s hard to see how much reading and talking goes on.

It is also entirely possible that what is quality for one child is not quality for another. And what is quality for a one-year-old is different from a child aged 4½. The international literature is also clear that places at high-quality centres tend to be taken by the parents with higher incomes. This leads to a confounding of the correlation between outcomes for children and attendance at childcare: it’s not the impact of childcare but the fact these children would always have done better in the absence of childcare attendance.

Centre-based childcare remains in the news for all the wrong reasons, with more instances emerging of children being mistreated by childcare workers. There have been various kneejerk reactions by the federal and state governments, including the completely predictable review in Victoria headed by former South Australian Labor premier Jay Weatherill.

Given his role at Minderoo Foundation’s early childhood development arm, Thrive by Five, arguably Weatherill is not an appropriate person to conduct the inquiry given the potential for a conflict of interest as well as strong preconceived views. But Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan no doubt sees the issue differently.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has been active, at least in terms of statements. There is talk of speeding up a national register of childcare workers.

It’s not clear what real information is gleaned from viewing the work history of childcare workers, but the government will get some comfort from being seen to doing something.

There is a proposal, to be backed by legislation, of the withdrawal of federal funding where centres fail to meet stipulated quality standards after a warning is given. More than 10 per cent of centres are currently failing minimum standards, although this is sometimes because of a failure to engage a university-qualified preschool teacher for a minimum of 10 hours a week.

Whether the government would actually take this drastic action and deprive parents of childcare places required for them to continue in their jobs is unclear.

It can become a major issue in small communities where there may be only one childcare centre/preschool. Focusing on the qualifications of the staff looks like a lost opportunity when considerations related to child safety are much more pressing.

The emergence of some of these problems in the childcare industry may prove to be timely given the Prime Minister’s commitment to a flat low-fee universal childcare model. Apart from the ruinous expense to the taxpayer of going down this route, too many children may end up adversely affected.

If children really are our future, we need to offer them the best start possible.