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Child care and early education in Australia - The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

9. Overview

9.1 Introduction

The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) provides the first opportunity to profile infant and childhood experiences of non-parental child care and early childhood education on a national level. In the period preceding and accompanying the preparation of this paper, no less than 10 reports or policy statements have been released on topics of direct relevance to this report. In April 2006, for example, the Australian Institute published the findings of a national survey of staff working in long day care centres (Rush 2006). In June 2006, the New South Wales and Queensland Commissions for Children and Young People, and the National Investment for the Early Years (NIFTeY), launched their Policy directions for improving the experiences of infants and young children in a changing world (Press 2006). In July 2006, Council of Australian Governments (COAG) met to consider reforms in priority areas including:

Also in July 2006, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia hosted a workshop on child care policy that identified Ten policy principles for a national system of early childhood education and care and subsequently published Kids count. Better early childhood education and care in Australia (Hill, Pocock & Elliott 2007). In August 2006, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released Starting strong II, Early childhood education and care (ECEC), which reviewed access and provision of ECEC in the context of women’s labour force participation and parental leave, quality-assurance mechanisms and OECD-identified areas for policy attention across 20 countries, including Australia.

In December 2007, the COAG formed the Productivity Agenda Working Group ‘to pursue substantial reform in the areas of education, skills and early childhood development’ (COAG December 2007 Communique). The working group released a discussion paper (‘A national quality framework for early childhood education and care’) in August 2008 to progress these reforms (COAG 2008). In November 2008, the COAG endorsed a new National Partnership Agreement on Early Childhood Education with a commitment to ensuring that all children will have access to a quality early childhood education program by 2013, delivered by a four-year university-trained early childhood teacher, for 15 hours a week, 40 weeks a year, in the year before formal schooling. Subsequently the Office of Early Childhood Education and Childcare released a series of documents to support the development of the National Quality Agenda for Early Childhood Education and Care, the National Early Years Workforce Strategy and the Early Years Learning Framework.

The following summary, discussion and interpretation of results from Wave 1 of the LSAC study draw on these contemporary reports in considering how the research can inform Australian government and non-government organisations (NGOs) as they continue the process of early childhood education and child care policy review, reform and implementation.

Broadly, the preliminary findings in this report echo the findings of recent international research studies that show close associations between family circumstances and the use of child care and early childhood education (ed. NICHD–ECC 2005), along with the stronger relationship between developmental outcomes and family characteristics than child care experiences (NICHD-ECC 2006). In other words, it is clear that family demographics and socioeconomic and psychosocial factors affect the child care choices parents make (that is, to use or not use care, and, if so, what type and what amount per week) and the development of the child. The approach we have taken in this final section places families at the centre of the discussion about the use and impact of child care and early education on child outcomes.

This section consolidates the findings presented in Sections 3 to 8. We highlight convergent themes within the infant and child cohorts, and across age groups. Where appropriate, we refer to links between the LSAC findings and existing research to identify areas of convergence and divergence. Where there is divergence, we speculate on what might explain the differences between international and Australian results. In reviewing key findings from LSAC, we identify links to current issues and policy discussions in early childhood education and care. The section concludes with comments on future directions for research and analysis, both within the LSAC data set and beyond.

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9.2 Summary and review of key findings

Infant child care and developmental outcomes

In relation to the infant cohort, we noted that, as in the US NICHD–ECC study, the primary driver for using child care for infants was parents’ work or study commitments, but that the decision to return to work was related to maternal psychosocial characteristics (for example, lower separation anxiety) and socioeconomic and demographic factors (for example, higher weekly income, fewer children in the household). Availability of suitable child care, although not directly addressed in the LSAC interview, is also a likely factor in mothers returning to work. A key finding was that infant child care, used by just over one-third of the LSAC families, was primarily accessed within the family network, through grandparents or other relatives. These forms of informal home-based care settings, together with family day care homes, constituted the care experience received by 71.7 per cent of infants in care, whereas long day care centres were used by only 28.3 per cent of infants. Maternal characteristics associated with the use of long day care centres were: having a university education, working full-time, and reporting lower levels of social support, parenting self-efficacy and positive parenting.

Infant communication and home-based care

Associations between child care characteristics and ‘concern’ regarding infants’ emerging communications skills were very small. In general, the experience of non-parental child care did not appear to be related to the development of infant communication skills, but results suggested a consistent pattern that favoured home-based care settings (informal and formal). Infants cared for by relatives or non-relative informal carers (such as nannies) were the group least likely to be identified as having poor communication ability. This type of care setting is most likely to approach a ratio of one adult to one infant. The NICHD study noted that ‘… the closer the child–adult ratio is to 1:1, the higher was the probability of sensitive, positive caregiving’ (ed. NICHD–ECC 2005, p. 63).

The effects of quality, as measured by carers’ level of education, group size, adult-to-child ratios, carer–child interaction and provisions for play and learning, could not be controlled for in the LSAC analyses of infant outcomes (due to the small sample size for carers of LSAC infants who returned their questionnaires). However, given the consistency with which quality care has been associated with cognitive developmental outcomes in other studies, it is possible that the child care effects we have reported for infant communication reflect differences in the quality of child care in different settings. As reported in the literature review, more positive involvement by the care giver and a more stimulating verbal environment—key ingredients of high quality care—have been associated with gains in language and cognitive outcomes in toddlers and preschoolers. Self-reports of activities from carers of the LSAC infants indicated they were involved with infants in singing, telling stories, reading books and playing at a similarly high level across all types of care settings, both home-based and centre-based. While this finding may indicate a limitation in the measure, that is, being self-report rather than observed ratings, it reinforces the importance of taking into account the number of children placed with any single child care provider as this influences the nature and intensity of interactions that take place between infants and adults.

Low child-to-carer ratios in home care settings provide a greater opportunity for focused one-on-one interaction, which is a likely contributor to the association with enhanced infant communication ability. As the overall number of LSAC infants attending formal child care settings was relatively small, these findings can only be regarded as preliminary. However, they do suggest that carer-to-child ratios and group size may well moderate the effects on communication skills of child care experiences in the first year of life.

Infant physical health and centre-based care

The results of multivariable analyses predicting parent-reported low physical health and greater occurrence of acute infections also favoured home-based care settings. Infants attending informal home-care arrangements with relatives and non-relatives, or formal family day care homes, were no more likely to have poorer health outcomes or acute infections than infants in exclusive parental care. In contrast, centre-based care was associated with a higher likelihood of infants being identified as having ongoing infections and poorer health. Further, more hours in centre-based care increased the risk of ongoing health problems.

The NICHD-ECC longitudinal study has the best dataset for the purposes of comparison. As mentioned in Section 1, the NICHD-ECC study showed that children looked after in groups of six or more were 1.4 to 2 times more likely to suffer from gastrointestinal, ear or upper-respiratory infections than children looked after in smaller groups. It is likely that children attending group care settings with six or more very young children have a much greater chance of getting an infection from another child, either by direct contact or from coming into contact with viruses and bacteria spread through the air or onto objects such as toys. However, while common infections such as coughs and colds can be uncomfortable for the child, they are rarely serious. In subsequent waves of LSAC it will be possible to ascertain whether there is a relation between ongoing problems with infections and other areas of infant development. Recurrent ear infections, for example, can lead to hearing loss, and prolonged or intermittent hearing loss associated with ear infection can result in delayed language acquisition. It is worth noting, however, that longitudinal data from the NICHD-ECC study suggests that health status from birth to age 3 years was not associated with later child behaviour, language or school readiness. Future analysis of subsequent waves of the LSAC data set will be needed to assess the possibility of a similar pattern of results in Australia.

Child care/early education and development for 4 to 5 year olds

In relation to the child cohort, it was apparent that, as in the UK EPPE research (Sylva et al. 2003, the LSAC families accessed a diverse range of programs for their child’s care and early education. These programs differed by location (for example, school and non-school settings), auspice (for example, community-based and privately owned), cost (for example, state or territory or Australian Government subsidies), hours and days of opening (for example, school hours/terms, part-time hours, full-time long day care), staffing requirements (for example, staff-to-child ratio, university versus TAFE qualified staff), curriculum (for example, teacher-directed versus child-initiated approaches to learning), environment (for example, children’s access to educational resources) and support for staff (for example, professional development, decision-making processes). While all state and territory governments in Australia have some commitment to supporting children’s access to one year of preschool in the year before they start formal school (pre-Year 1), the states and territories differ in the extent to which this policy is enacted. The primary mode is through government funding of preschool programs in schools and non-school settings. A less common approach is through educational programs available through other formal schemes such as long day care centres.

Earlier reports on the Wave 1 data set for 4 to 5 year olds have noted that some of the variation in the use of preschool education programs and the affordability of these programs for the LSAC families was related to the state or territory in which they resided (Harrison & Ungerer 2005). Importantly, however, analyses undertaken in this report focused on national trends.

Use of early education and care programs and developmental outcomes

On average, 95.1 per cent of the LSAC families were using some form of centre or school-based early childhood education and care program for their 4 to 5 year-old child. The remaining 4.9 per cent of children were either cared for exclusively at home, or at a relative’s home, or by a family day carer. Compelling evidence from international studies of the long-term benefits of attending an early childhood education program in the years before entering formal school (Gormley Jr et al. 2005; Magnuson et al. 2003; Manuson, Ruhm & Waldfogel 2004; NICHD & Duncan 2003; Sylva et al. 2003) is consistent with findings presented in this report showing poorer outcomes in language, literacy and numeracy for children receiving exclusive parental care or home-based care only. We felt it was critical, therefore, to identify the factors associated with families not using a school/centre-based early childhood program.

Seventeen separate measures indexing family background, including child and maternal sociodemographic characteristics, family finances, community disadvantage, maternal employment, social support, personal wellbeing and parenting, were assessed in relation to the type of care/early education. Of the 17 measures tested, 12 were significantly associated with reduced likelihood of children’s non-attendance at a school or centre-based care/early education program and 11 could be seen as ‘risk factors’ for poorer child outcomes. These consisted of: lower maternal education, lower family income, more financial stresses, more children in the household, unemployed mother, living in a less-advantaged neighbourhood, growing up in a lone-parent or Indigenous family, speaking a language in the home other than English, and having a mother with higher levels of psychological distress or poorer parenting behaviour. These analyses showed that families more at risk were not only least likely to use formal care/early education services, but also more likely to use programs on offer at school settings. Low fees and ease of access to these programs (in states and territories with universal preschool provision within the public school system) are likely to make them attractive options for less economically advantaged families.

Further related to children’s experience of early childhood were findings showing that for 20 per cent of children, entry into their first non-parental child care/early education setting occurred after age 4 years. This added a further dimension to our exploration of the LSAC families’ use of care/early education settings, by raising the question of whether pre-Year 1 in school might be the first encounter many children have with a formal early childhood setting. Unfortunately, the limitations of the Wave 1 data set for the 4 to 5 year-old cohort did not allow us to address this question; however, future waves of data collection for the infant cohort will be able to fully and prospectively record children’s experiences of care/early education in the years before entering pre-Year 1 at school. A key question for future investigation is whether children who enter pre-Year 1 without previously attending a centre or school-based care/education program experience more difficulty in adjusting to school than their peers. Related to this is the question of whether duration (in years) of experience in formal care/preschool education programs influences child outcomes in school, as has been noted in the UK EPPE study.

In relation to child developmental outcomes, results for language ability showed that children attending a school or preschool program were more competent, as measured by receptive vocabulary, than children who did not attend an early childhood program, including school, preschool and long day care. For children who attended such a program, the three main types of care/early education—pre-Year 1, preschool and long day care centres—were equally beneficial for their language competence. Similar findings were noted for the broader construct of school readiness, as assessed by the Who Am I? test of early literacy and numeracy. Apart from pre-Year 1, which was associated with higher test results, children were equally well prepared by their prior to school care/education experience in preschool or in long day care settings.

Amount of care/early education and developmental outcomes

Just as accessibility and cost of care/education are linked to state and territory policies for the provision of preschool education for 4 year olds, so is the amount of time children can attend these settings per week. For example, universal fully funded preschool is available for 10 to 12 hours per week in six of Australia’s eight states and territories (Press 2006). Not surprisingly then, preschool was the most commonly used type of care/education in the LSAC sample (54.6 per cent). When preschool was the only setting the child attended, this was for an average of 12 to 14 hours a week. For many families (32.0 per cent of the sample) these hours were enough. But for others, longer weekly hours were used, either by adding other care arrangements to preschool (22.6 per cent) or by using a long day care centre, on its own or with other care (23.9 per cent). These combinations of arrangements resulted in children being in care/education settings for an average of 24.4 to 26.0 hours/week (preschool with other care) or an average of 33.9 hours a week (long day care with other care).

Results for children’s cognitive outcomes showed mixed effects for the amount of weekly care/education. An unexpected finding, not evident in previous research, was that receptive vocabulary scores were negatively associated with longer weekly hours of attendance at care/education, particularly as hours reached 31 to 40 or more than 40 hours a week. In other studies, cognitive and language outcomes have typically been associated with quality and type of care (NICHD-ECC) or duration (in years attended) of preschool experience (Sylva et al. 2003), rather than weekly hours. Given that quality ratings were similarly good across the three main types of early childhood programs, the explanation for the LSAC findings may lie in the combinations of care and education used by families needing longer hours. It was common for families to add informal care from relatives and non-relatives to increase their child’s weekly hours of care. These types of settings were found (in the infant cohort) to be less well equipped than formal settings with resources to support children’s language, and creative and pretend play. If the 4 to 5 year-old children have attended these informal settings for an extended period of time, it may be that this prolonged exposure to a less stimulating environment has contributed to lower receptive vocabulary scores. This possibility is supported by other Australian research that has linked informal care in the first 2.5 years to poorer academic adjustment at school (Love et al. 2003).

An alternate explanation for the association between longer hours of care/education and poorer language competence is needed, however, for children whose additional care was provided through other formal settings (that is, preschool with long day care). In this case, it may be that longer hours in multiple group care settings are overtaxing the adaptive capacities of the children. At this stage, it is not possible to determine whether the association is explained by the child’s current care/education attendance or by previous child care experiences. Future waves of LSAC will shed light on this question.

A different pattern of results was noted for amount of care/education and the broader construct of school readiness, as tested by children’s scores on the Who am I? test. Attending an early childhood program for more than eight hours per week, particularly for the categories of 9 to 20 or 21 to 30 hours a week, was associated with higher scores for early literacy and numeracy.

The associations between amount of care/early education and child cognitive outcomes warrants closer examination. It was clear from parents’ reasons for using additional care/education for their child that for most families (69.7 to 72.3 per cent) longer hours were needed to enable them to meet their work or study commitments. This was a common experience across most of the LSAC families. We noted few associations between amount of care/education and family demographic or socioeconomic characteristics or maternal wellbeing. Where there were significant findings, they pointed to more economically advantaged families using longer hours of care, but additionally, lone parents and families speaking a language other than English also used longer hours. For the latter group, the most common arrangement used for the child was pre-Year 1 plus additional child care.

The use of multiple care/education arrangements may be evidence that the current care/education system is not working for some families. Using two or more different weekly care settings to cover the hours of a part-time or full-time job is a likely stressor for families and possibly also for children (Bowes et al. 2004). Large families are a particular case in point. As the numbers of children in the household increased, families tended to use shorter hours of care. It was not possible in the current analyses to determine whether this was due to issues of affordability of care or of accessibility to the different care/education settings that children of different ages can attend. The findings are reminiscent of McDonald’s (2000a, 2000b) earlier work on family size, which identified the diminished capacity of large families to balance work and family responsibilities due to limitations on what care/education services parents are able to access in terms of location or affordability, or the services they elect to use.

These findings illustrate the possible difficulties families may have in finding a good match between their child’s care/education and their own work arrangements. They also underline the interconnections between the amount and stability (multiplicity) of care, both of which have been associated with more negative outcomes for children, particularly in the social and emotional domain (Harrison & Ungerer 2000; NICHD-ECC 2001, 2003). Similar findings are noted in this report, not for amount (in hours of care used per week), but for multiplicity of settings and/or programs used by any one child/family during a given week. Teachers reported more behaviour problems and lower pro-social behaviour in children attending more care/education settings per week.

Contexts of care and early education

Studies from a variety of locations, internationally and within Australia, have underlined the importance of quality in child care and early education programs. The LSAC study gathered details on the structural indicators of quality (adult-to-child ratios, carer/teacher level of education and experience), but was limited by not being able to gather observational measures of process quality. Carer/teacher self-report provisions were included to approximate these measures and have generated valuable information on aspects of infant care and educational programs for 4 to 5 year olds. LSAC also has obtained linked data from the National Childcare Accreditation Council (NCAC) for Quality Improvement and Accreditation System (QIAS) ratings for formal long day care centres and family day care schemes attended by the LSAC infant and child. Analysis of these NCAC data was not possible within the present report, but in future it will be possible to examine child outcomes in relation to these externally assessed aspects of child care quality.

Structural indicators of quality

Infant care settings and care/education programs for 4 to 5 year olds were described in terms of carer/teacher age, experience, level and field of education and ratios of children to staff. For infant care, staff in long day care centres were the more qualified, but also the youngest, and therefore the least experienced, carers. In contrast, informal home-based carers were older, and thus potentially more experienced, but had lower levels of formal education (for example, 48.8 per cent with Year 10 or less). The quality of informal care settings becomes critical when examining the pattern of usage across the LSAC samples. The findings presented in this report showed that about one-quarter of infants (24.3 per cent) and children aged 4 to 5 years (25.6 per cent) received regular care from relatives or non-relatives. Subsequent longitudinal analyses on the use of non-parental care have shown that informal care was used by approximately one-third of LSAC families when infants were aged 1 to 2 years (31.3 per cent) (Blakemore 2007) and 2 to 3 years (33.9 per cent) (Harrison 2007, 2008). These four data collection points of LSAC provide strong evidence for a continuous use of informal care throughout the prior-to-school years.

Research has shown that care givers’ education level and receptive vocabulary are key predictors of child language and cognitive outcomes (ed. NICHD-ECC 2005). Is there cause for concern, therefore, in that a significant proportion of LSAC children are receiving informal care from carers who, in general, have achieved only minimal levels of school education? Results pointing to higher outcomes for infant communication in informal home-based care suggest this may not be a problem for very young children; but results showing lower receptive vocabulary for 4 to 5 year-old children attending long day care or preschool with other care are consistent with this concern. The possible associations between infant outcomes and quality of care were not able to be tested due to the small numbers of infants in child care. However, multivariable analyses of outcomes for 4 to 5 year olds were able to include carer/teacher education, and showed the benefits for children of having more university qualified and more experienced staff. At this stage there is no evidence to suggest that informal home-based care is not appropriate or beneficial for infants’ development. The question for future waves of the LSAC data analysis is whether this continues to be true for toddlers and preschoolers.

For children aged 4 to 5 years, there were marked difference in teachers’ level of education across the four types of early childhood settings. School-based pre-Year 1 (77.5 per cent) and preschool teachers (73.9 per cent) were the most likely to be university qualified, compared to 56.8 per cent in preschools not in a school and 42.7 per cent in long day care. Multivariable analyses predicting mother-reported pro-social and problem behaviour identified that having a teacher with a university qualification was linked to improved outcomes. Also notable were differences in teachers’ area of study. Less than one-half of pre-Year 1 teachers (41.4 per cent) held a specialist early childhood qualification; whereas this type of qualification was typical of preschool (77.7 per cent). Long day care staff held either early childhood (53.1 per cent) or child care (25.3 per cent) qualifications. Multivariable analyses for the subgroup of 4 to 5 year olds attending pre-Year 1 identified the benefits for children’s language development of having an early childhood qualified teacher.

On the whole, however, the data suggested that preschool and long day care services were more similar than different on these indices of quality. This is the likely explanation for the LSAC care quality measures not being strong predictors of child developmental outcomes (which differs from US results). Studies have shown that the level of observed quality achieved in Australian early childhood services is significantly higher and less variable than levels observed in US settings (Harrison et al. 2006).

Process indicators of quality

Carers and teachers reported on their involvement, the types of experiences being provided and level of resources for infant and childhood play and learning. Again, it was not possible to include the infant indicators in the outcome analyses, but descriptive comparisons indicated important differences in practices across formal and informal home-based care. These data alert us to the limited provisions for infant play and learning that may be typical of informal care settings, and while informal care with relatives was found to be a positive influence in infancy, it remains to be seen if this type of setting continues to meet the developmental needs of children as they become more physically mobile, and more socially and linguistically active.

For the child cohort, different teaching practices were associated with different aspects of child development. Teacher-supported small group activities were linked to improved social outcomes for preschool and long day care settings, and to improved literacy and numeracy for pre-Year 1 classrooms. Teacher-directed whole group activities were beneficial for children’s academic outcomes. Child-initiated activities, seen by many educators to be an important part of new approaches in early childhood education, such as emergent curriculum (for example, the NSW Department of Community Services 2003), were negatively associated with academic and social outcomes, but only for children in pre-Year 1 classes. It will be interesting to follow up the longer-term outcomes of this approach in analyses of Wave 2 when all children will have entered formal school settings and data collection is expanded to include a wider range of school adjustment measures, such as children’s attitudes to school and ability to work independently.

Organisational indicators of quality

The measures selected for the LSAC study also address the importance of quality of good employment practices in early childhood settings. ‘High quality care depends upon stable, qualified, appropriately rewarded staff’ (ASSA Principle 6). A measure of workplace supportiveness for staff was included for long day care centres and family day care homes attended by infants and for all care/education programs attended by 4 to 5 year olds. Interestingly, the information received from staff was very positive—average ratings were over four on a five-point scale, and only a very small number of staff rated their centre’s supportiveness at three or under. Long day care scores were almost identical for carers of infants and teachers of 4 to 5 year olds (means of 26.4 to 26.6 out of 30). For teachers/carers in centre and school-based settings for 4 to 5 year olds, slightly lower ratings of support in the workplace were reported in school settings.

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9.3 Emergent themes

Quality issues for infant child care

This section considers mechanisms to support the provision of high quality infant child care. It is an artefact of the study design that LSAC has limited data on structural indicators of quality in infant care. Indeed, group size and child-to-staff ratios were only available for formal child care settings. The effects of these aspects of child care quality can thus only be controlled for in analyses involving the small subset of infants attending formal child care. Carer age, experience and education, carer–child interaction and provision of resources for play and learning were available for all child care settings, but it was not possible to control for child care quality in analyses involving infants across the full range of care arrangements as well as infants in exclusive parental care. It was also difficult to quantify the exact impact of the observed differential between the care providers in terms of their education/training and age/experience with child rearing. However, from a policy perspective, the need for ongoing professional development for all care providers across all areas of early childhood care and education requires serious consideration. The following sections highlight key themes for policy makers and professional practitioners.

Child-to-carer ratios

The large majority of LSAC families chose to use small group, home-based child care for their infants, most often provided by relatives. The associated advantages for infant health and communication development raise the issue of infant-to-carer ratios and how these vary across different types of care. As noted in Section 7, in a recently proposed set of principles for child care in Australia, experts recommended that ratios for infant care be no more than three infants to every carer (ASSA Ten policy principles for a national system of early childhood education and care). Furthermore, studies have identified lower ratios with more positive care giving. Findings from the LSAC study showed that for the majority of centres, the reported staff-to-child ratio was 1:4. Although ratios were not recorded for home-based care, it is likely that many infants in informal care arrangements were cared for in one-to-one arrangements or with their siblings. For those in family day care services, the number of children per carer is likely to be higher (on average, around Australia family day care regulations stipulate a 1:5 carer-to-child ratio for children not yet at school; Press 2006), but services tend to restrict the number of infants within this group to either one or two. A mix of age groups in family day care can enhance the carer’s ability to provide one-to-one interaction with an infant while at the same time monitoring and supporting toddlers’ and preschoolers’ play. Such a mix of ages is less common in long day care centres, although this model (family grouping) may be a useful means for staff to work within the context of high ratios of children to adults (4 or 5:1) usually found in long day care centres.

Infant health

Maintaining good health is an important aspect of high quality care. The data presented in this report have shown that infants attending centre-based care are at greater risk of having ongoing infections than infants receiving home-based care. The Australian Government’s QIAS addresses infection control within the ‘health’ quality area in long day care centres under quality principle 6.6—‘The centre acts to control the spread of infectious diseases and maintains records of immunisations’. Ensuring that the recommended measures, precautions and daily practices (for example, toy washing) underpinning these principles are implemented should reduce the risk of infections. Interestingly, in respect of QIAS principle 6.6, the National Childcare Accreditation Council (NCAC 2007) reported that 69 per cent of long day care centres had achieved high quality, 14 per cent achieved good quality, 0 per cent were satisfactory and 17 per cent were unsatisfactory. This was one of eight principles for centre-based care identified as most often not achieving a satisfactory rating. Maintenance of quality-assurance processes in respect of health is critical if rates of infection among children attending child care are to decrease. It may be possible to examine these questions in future analyses of the LSAC infant cohort by analysing the linked dataset provided by the NCAC on QIAS ratings for principles related to health in the long day care centres used by families in LSAC and family day care homes.

The policy in long day care and family day care concerning the exclusion of children who are sick and infectious from mixing with other children can be a difficult decision-making process for carers/teachers. They might be reluctant to send a child home when parents have no access to other forms of care, but have to balance the care needs of one family against the health needs of the other children in the setting. In terms of policies for recurrent infections, services might also consider advising parents of children who experience more frequent infections that substituting time spent with large groups of children with time in a small group care setting, such as family day care or other regulated home care service, may prove beneficial. We note that, within the field, it is recognised that finding appropriate day care services for children when they contract infectious diseases is an ongoing policy challenge for parents and policy planners.

Support for home-based carers

Given the extensive use of informal care settings for infants, and the evidence that these carers are least likely to have completed a high school education or undertaken training in early childhood care, it is important to consider strategies that could enhance the level of professional support available to relatives and non-relatives providing these services. For example, the LSAC findings included a self-reported lower level of carer involvement in active outdoor play in relative and non-relative home-based care, and less availability of resources for infant and toddler creative and pretend play.

It may be worthwhile to investigate options for extending the services provided by maternal and child health nurses. For instance, grandparents, other relatives and non-relatives caring for children could be encouraged to participate in supported playgroups made available regularly in local neighbourhoods. These supported playgroups could be coordinated by multidisciplinary teams involving education, health and welfare professionals delivering formal services, as has been developed in the UK’s Children’s Centres program.

Support for long day care centre carers/teachers

Results showed that families using long day care centres for their infants’ child care tend to be more economically advantaged, but also more psychosocially disadvantaged, than families using home-based care. In particular, mothers using long day care reported lower levels of social support, parental self-esteem and positive parenting than mothers using other forms of care. Given that these measures of maternal wellbeing were also associated with poorer developmental outcomes for children—including infant communication competence and physical health, and child social wellbeing and cognitive achievement—the implications for centre-based carers, teachers and managers need serious consideration. Promoting positive parenting, supporting parents in their care giving role, and helping families to form social networks are key aspects of high quality child care provision, but to achieve this requires targeted professional development for staff and centre policies that include effective strategies to enhance the learning potential of parent users as well as staff.

Quality in prior-to-school care and education

The 2006 OECD report, Starting Strong II, identified four policy issues for Australia, two of which referred to quality. It identified the need for ‘firmer regulations about numbers of trained staff to be employed’ (p. 272). Recent policy documents from Australian sources are similarly unanimous in highlighting the need for early childhood services to not only employ university, TAFE and other appropriately qualified staff, but also to maintain a high ratio of qualified staff to children. LSAC has provided data (albeit limited to the child’s primary carer/teacher) showing inequities in the number of university qualified staff in the different early childhood sectors: schools, preschools not in a school and long day care centres. The data also showed that carer/teacher participants in long day care centres were younger than their counterparts in schools and preschools, suggesting that long day care may comprise a relatively youthful workforce. Although not assessed by the LSAC questions, this finding may indicate a higher level of staff turnover in long day care compared to other early childhood settings.

Related to staff turnover is the second policy issue identified by the OECD report—the possible undermining of quality by ‘the low pay, low status, and training levels of ECEC staff’ (p. 272). Although the workplace conditions of pay and status were not addressed by LSAC, findings on staff perceptions of their workplace do not bear out suggestions that poor workplace conditions are undermining quality. Staff who completed the questionnaires gave consistently high ratings on items related to supportiveness of their environment, which is a good indication that staff feel valued and able to contribute to decision-making processes. However, these results are limited to the single staff member who completed the LSAC survey and to conditions within workplace settings; they do not speak for the wider population of child care workers or address the broader issues of pay and status that may affect job satisfaction and performance. It may also be the case that teachers/carers who worked in a more supportive workplace were more likely to have the time and motivation to complete and return the questionnaire. The LSAC framework is, therefore, limited in the extent to which it can help policy makers understand the impact of child care workforce and management practices on quality.

Comprehensive universal system of early childhood provision versus fragmentation

One challenge facing the LSAC families was to match their child’s use of care/early education with their work or study commitments. We noted that mixed arrangements of care and education were used by many families (rising from 23.2 per cent for the infant cohort to 35.8 per cent for families with a 4 to 5 year-old child) and were most evident in families requiring longer hours of care than may have been available through school, preschool or long day care settings. The fragmented nature of these experiences appeared to have some negative impact on older children, as indexed by a direct association with poorer social and behavioural outcomes, according to their teachers/carers. Other factors that may have contributed to this association include more time spent in multiple care overall, or having experienced more changes of care settings over time. The demands placed on children attending different care arrangements, or care for very long hours, are a likely explanation for results showing lower social developmental outcomes for children in mixed care settings and lower cognitive outcomes for children in care for more than 31 hours per week. Although not directly assessed in the LSAC protocol, it would not be unexpected for families to also feel more stressed by having to manage multiple care arrangements across the week.

These findings echo policy discussions and recommendations on ‘coherence and coordination’ in early childhood provisions (OECD 2006, p. 272) and the need for greater integration of services within ‘a national, universal, and integrated early childhood education and care system’ (ASSA 2006, Principle 3). In these debates, it is also important to note that 4.2 per cent of families identified ‘relationships with grandparents/relatives’ as their reason for using multiple care. Consideration of families’ preference for informal care within the extended family must also be addressed in future policy discussion.

Infants and children with additional educational needs

Findings for both infant and child cohorts highlighted differences in families’ use of care and education settings, and in developmental outcomes, for children from special groups, notably Indigenous children and children growing up in homes where a language other than English is spoken. Although LSAC is limited in its ability to address specific issues related to special groups because of the relatively low level of representation in the population and the LSAC sample, the information in this report identified issues of policy relevance, particularly in relation to children from LOTE families. A consistent pattern that emerged for both infant and child cohorts was the use of longer hours of child care and the use of informal family-based care (with parents, grandparents or other relatives) to meet this need. Added to this is evidence that LOTE families were more likely than English-only speaking families to enrol their child in a pre-Year 1 program.

It has not been possible to undertake a deeper level of analysis of the data set to answer questions about why LOTE families are using informal care and school, rather than prior-to-school preschool and long day care programs. It would be interesting to know to what extent families from non–English speaking backgrounds represent recently arrived immigrants and refugees with limited experience of formal services prior to their arrival in Australia. Previous experiences with formal care/education services and the child rearing practices of their own family context are likely influences on parents’ use of formal services for their own children. Further investigation is needed to ascertain whether LOTE families are opting out of the formal child care/education system and, if so, whether this is due to cultural preference, affordability, or lack of culturally-responsive services.

The observed pattern for some LSAC children of having no experience of centre or school-based early childhood education before entering formal school was the least advantageous for children’s social, English language, and early literacy and numeracy development. When considering the evidence for LOTE children, it may be that pre-Year 1 is not the best environment for these children to have their first opportunity to interact with their English-speaking peers. Raising awareness and understanding about these research findings can be incorporated into resource and policy documents distributed to newly arrived immigrant and refugee families with young children requiring access to early childhood care and education services.

Early childhood education and care as family support

Much has been written about the role of formal early childhood services as family support, particularly for Australian children growing up in circumstances of disadvantage (Stanley, Richardson & Prior 2005). While this issue was not in the scope of the present study, findings presented in this report are relevant. We noted that families reporting a higher level of risk on a number of child, family and community factors were less likely to be using care and education provisions for their child. Future investigations need to investigate the incidence and implications of children growing up ‘outside the early childhood care and education system’ to identify why the system is not working for them and how to best provide means of support. Matching needs according to factors such as age, cultural background, languages spoken, religion and length of residence in Australia may also enhance parents’ sense of security and self-confidence in their caring and educating of their young children.

For the infant cohort, the majority of mothers were not at work and were providing exclusive parental care. However, whether this was linked to a lack of connection to the workforce, a preference for being at home with their infants, or to availability of formal child care services or relatives as possible care providers could not be identified at this stage of the study. Mothers of infants not in care did report higher levels of separation anxiety and lower levels of social support. In these circumstances, it may be that other services, such as supported playgroups, would be more appropriate sites to develop social networks and support. Monitoring and evaluating the long-term effectiveness of these structures also requires adequate resourcing.

For the 4 to 5 year olds, parental factors beneficial to children’s social and language development, such as more positive parenting behaviour, were also linked to the use of formal care/education settings. Parents of children not attending any centre or school-based programs were more likely to report parenting difficulties (that is, less warmth, more hostility, less consistency). While there may be other reasons for these findings, they also support the positive impact on parenting that may arise from regular contact with formal early childhood education services and the opportunity to discuss child rearing issues with the qualified staff who work there. Early childhood education and care centres can also act as a hub to coordinate service delivery by bringing together professionals from different disciplines, such as health workers and social workers, to support families in a cohesive way.

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9.4 Conclusions and future directions

Recent developments in Australia have seen a concerted focus on the early childhood years, both from government organisations (for example, the National Partnership Agreement on Early Childhood Education, the National Agenda for Early Childhood), government and non-government representatives (for example, What about the kids? published by the New South Wales and Queensland Commissioners for children with NIFTeY), and experts in the field (for example, ASSA, Ten principles for a national system of early childhood education and care and Kids count. Better early childhood education and care in Australia). The timeliness of the release of the Wave 1 LSAC study data that informed this report cannot be overstated. The findings are nationally representative, comprehensive and contemporary. Future waves of data will continue to inform the nation about the ways families manage their child care needs and make provision for early education experiences for their toddlers and preschoolers. Future waves will also provide the first national data on the use of school-age child care.

This report underlines the interconnections among family circumstances and children’s experiences of non-parental child care and early education. Most families of infants were providing exclusive parental care, but when care was used it was primarily within informal arrangements with relatives. This form of infant care was found to have benefits for the child’s physical health and communication; however, this finding must be qualified by the limitations of the measures available for this young and varied age range, and by the small numbers of infants enrolled in the different types of care settings. By age 4 to 5 years, 95.1 per cent of the LSAC children were attending a formal early childhood program provided by qualified teachers/carers in a school, preschool, or long day care centre. In the main, these centre and school-based experiences were found to enhance children’s development across social, language and learning domains. Some concern was raised, however, for children accessing long hours of care additional to the primary early childhood program, particularly in relation to their language development.

This report, while not claiming to represent early childhood care and education services, suggests that infants and 4 to 5 year-old children are receiving positive experiences in their care/education settings. Most carers reported that they interact with infants in ways that stimulate play and development across all domains. Similarly, teachers/carers in schools, preschools and long day care centres reported that they engage children in a variety of curriculum approaches that support learning and social interaction. In addition, carers/teachers reported a good to high level of personal support in the formal child care and preschool services where they work. These are positive findings for the early childhood field.

The LSAC Wave 1 data have generated current, comprehensive information on the links between families, their use of child care/early education services and children’s developmental outcomes. The findings have, in some cases, affirmed previous Australian and international reports and, in others, identified new findings. There are important implications to be drawn from this report into Child care and early education in Australia for policy and professional practice in early childhood education and care.

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