About 1300 three-year-olds in Brisbane and Mount Isa will this week become the first Queensland children to take part in the $5 million Effective Early Education Experiences Study (E4Kids).
QUT researcher Professor Karen Thorpe said the 300 Mount Isa children and 1000 Brisbane children selected for the study would be visited by researchers twice a year over the next five years to track their educational, social and developmental progress.
She said 98 per cent of children aged four-and-a-half to five now attended Prep, but the way three-year-olds and four-year-olds were educated was completely optional, with only 29 per cent accessing a program with a qualified teacher.
"It's an important age because the care and educational experiences children have when they are three or four predicts how they will fare in their early years of school and beyond," Professor Thorpe said.
"E4Kids will follow the achievements of 2500 three-year-olds from diverse communities across Queensland and Victoria over five years and compare their earlier experiences with national test data that will be collected when the children are aged eight.
"This week is the start of our field research in Queensland - we have one team working in Mount Isa and three teams working across the greater Brisbane area, from Beenleigh to Caboolture to Ipswich.
"We will be visiting eight childcare centres, kindergartens and family day care services in Mount Isa, and 70 childcare centres across Brisbane, as well as kindergartens and family day care.
"The aim is to find out what contribution early care and education factors make to children's learning and social inclusion because this has lifetime effects.
"The federal government annually invests about $3 billion in services for children. With this study, we will find out where that money is best put for the greatest long-term benefit of those children."
Professor Thorpe, who is leading the Queensland component of the study, said Mount Isa had been chosen because it was a remote area with a lot of pressure for access to childcare and kindergarten services. It also had a higher proportion of Indigenous people.
Brisbane will provide a metropolitan focus.
The E4Kids study has received $3 million in funding from the Queensland and Victorian state governments, and has also received a $2.2 million Australian Research Council Linkage Grant. The results will help inform government policy relating to the early care and education of children.
"It is not whether children go to family day care, child care, educator-facilitated play groups or are cared for at home that is our key question but what happens within these experiences," Professor Thorpe said. "We want to find out the educational and social elements that best enhance children's long-term development."
Professor Thorpe said international research had shown that children who undertook quality education at early ages did better in their long-term schooling and had lower rates of adverse social outcomes such as teen pregnancy and crime.
The study involves QUT, the University of Melbourne and international researchers from the Universities of Toronto and London.
Professor Thorpe is a member of QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation.
Media contacts:
- Professor Karen Thorpe, QUT research leader, k.thorpe@qut.edu.au
- Mechelle McMahon, QUT media officer, 07 3138 2130 or ml.mcmahon@qut.edu.au
