ECC statement on the report from PM's Chief Science Advisor

The report from the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor:

01 June 2011

The Early Childhood Council has called the report from the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, released today (01 June), ‘a compelling argument for the effectiveness of investment in early childhood education and the services that can be built around it’.

Early Childhood Council CEO Peter Reynolds said the Chief Science Advisor’s report strongly linked impulsive and antisocial behaviour in adolescence to harmful early years experience, and recommended therefore investment in early years programmes targeted at at-risk children.

Mr Reynolds said the Chief Science Advisor’s report made a compelling case that the solution to teenage problems lay, in large measure, in improved early childhood experiences.

‘The science says the nation can, in many instances, get the biggest return on the investment of taxpayer money if that money goes into early childhood years, including early childhood education. And in our view the Chief Science Advisor’s report challenges the Government to act boldly, to go with the scientific evidence, and redirect funding to the early childhood sector.’

Mr Reynolds said it was ‘a national disgrace’ that low-income, at-risk children most likely to benefit from early childhood education were also those most likely to miss out.

It was horrible to think, he said, that young children whose lives were scarred by poverty, family instability, abuse and violence were also those least likely to benefit from early childhood services.

Mr Reynolds said that if resources were to be shifted to these children and families Government ‘would have to take great care to not take the easy road and seek to achieve this by cutting funding for existing essential early childhood services’.

The Early Childhood Council is the largest representative body of licensed early childhood centres in New Zealand. Its almost 1200 member centres are both community-owned and commercially owned, employ more than 7000 staff, and care for more than 50,000 children.

ENDS

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