‘The most important education’

The brain is without doubt our most fascinating organ. Parents, educators, and society as a whole have a tremendous power to shape the wrinkly universe inside each child’s head, and, with it, the kind of person he or she will turn out to be. We owe it to our children to help them grow the best brains possible.
—Lise Eliot, What is Going in There?

 

The human brain isn’t ready to be born until its owner is three years old. Diana Clements looks at why educators are fighting to reverse huge cuts to early childhood education.

It’s ironic that New Zealand pays its most important teachers – those working with the under 3s – the least, says Nathan Mikaere-Wallis, a lecturer at Canterbury University. In Canada it’s the exact reverse.
One of Mikaere-Wallis’ key areas of interest is tying the knot between brain development and education.
Understanding the brain, he argues, leads to new insights into learning. The brain is most absorbent up to three years of age, and money targeted at the ECE sector has greater long term benefit than any other sector of education.
“No education is as important as the first three years,” Mikaere-Wallis told EA. The body of international research is unequivocal on the subject:

• Compared to other animals’ brains and humans’ other organs, our brains aren’t ready to be born until we are three years old. “The human brain is not just formed by genetic material. It is formed partly by genetic material but also the environment of the early years.” For the first three years the human brain gathers data on the environment, which goes directly to forming the adult brain.
• The brain is only 15% connected when we are born, but 85% connected by age 4.
• An adult brain weighs 1.4kg. At birth a human brain weighs 300g, but has grown to 1.2kg by the age of three years old.
• 70% of human genes are “transcription genes”, which are reliant on pickup up of a transcription from the environment to be activated.

Given that the brain is most capable of change and development during the years from 0 to 3, the more input children have at this age, the higher the probability that that person will be successful later in life and develop into law-abiding tax-paying adults.
Yet in New Zealand, Mikaere-Wallis says the focus with babies in ECE is still on hygiene and changing nappies with a belief that the real learning comes later. “We tend to think that secondary school is more important,” he says.

Mikaere-Wallis cites Nobel prize winner Dr James Heckman of the University of Chicago, who concluded that for every dollar spent on the 0-3 age group, $17 is saved on adolescent services.
“Here we are still focussing on the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff…and building more boot camps, even though they are phenomenally unsuccessful.”

Mikaere-Wallis, who started his career as an early childhood and primary teacher, believes this year’s budget cuts for early childhood education were a move in the wrong direction.

“We already spend the least on early childhood [education], and now the new Budget takes even more money from early childhood. This flies in the face of what the research shows us.”
He believes money should be prioritised for parental intervention with policies such as increased parental leave. But accepting that more than 50% of children are in some form of early childhood centre by the time they are one year old, more needs to be spent there as well.
The budget cuts mean that more centres will use untrained staff in their baby sections, where trained staff members are needed more.

“What the centres tend to do is put untrained staff with the young babies. They think that the young babies need cuddling and nappies changed. You end up with (babies) in the most crucial stage of brain development with the least educated carers. It is very ironic that this most important area (the centres) will have the most untrained staff.”

Minister Tolley

In New Zealand, early childhood education is now on a collision course between politics and science.
Whilst Education Minister Anne Tolley refuses to budge, parents and early childhood educators are continuing to rally around the country against the 2010 Budget cuts.
More than 2000 centres nationwide will be affected by the cuts, which come into effect in February. Centres that employ between 80% to 100% of qualified teachers will be hardest hit, with many set to cut the numbers of trained staff to make ends meet or increase fees.
As EA went to press a survey by Labour found that 89% of the services losing funding will have to increase fees, and 48.8% of those centres will reduce qualified staffing levels.
(Read more on the statistics by the Salvation Army’s Alan Johnson at www.educationaotearoa.org.nz.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

The government has been accused of using dubious statistics to back its argument.
For example, says Jenny Davies, executive officer at NZEI Te Riu Roa, Tolley justified May’s Budget cuts with statistics that suggested there had been a three-fold spending increase on ECE, resulting in a 1% increase in participation.
“The actual increase is 16 per cent in participation, and much of that has come in the younger age groups where there are higher ratios, and where funding is therefore more expensive,” says Davies, citing Ministry of Education figures. 
“The main idea of the extra spending,however, was not to lift participation, but to lift quality - mainly by employing qualified teachers, and paying them more than the minimum wage.
“And there was a deliberate policy to spend more money to make early education more affordable for parents  – shifting the costs away from families with the 20 hours free for three and four year olds.”
Even though it wasn’t the main intention, enrolments did go up, says Davies. And there have been increases in the number of hours children are enrolled for, with the average hours of attendance increasing by 17.5 per cent from 2005 to 2009.

Win, win, win 

Economist Suzanne Snively, a former partner at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, argues that  employing qualified ECE teachers provides individuals with employment, generates higher household incomes, which in turn result in increased consumption, economic growth and increased tax revenue. “On the education side of the benefits equation, there are likely to be different sets of benefits.”
Snively says that by creating consistent, nurturing, safe environments for young families and their children there will be a quantum leap in their productivity both as students and in later life.
She adds that the outcome of spending more money on ECE is “win, win, win”:

• win for the child and its family
• win for society
• win for the taxpayer because the child will be:
• more productive, learning more
• healthier, costing less.

Another issue to be considered, Snively told delegates at the Economics of ECE Forum in November, is the ballooning costs at the other end of a neglected childhood. 
 “I know this personally because I informally fostered a child from a neglectful environment when he was 17. By that stage, it took at least 10 different government agencies to keep him on the straight and narrow – and that was even with my husband and I spending hours each day with him.”
See a PowerPoint by Suzanne on ECE at www.educationaotearoa.org.nz

Real little people matter

The Lord of the Rings’ fictional little people received almost instant government support when their futures were threatened, said Dr Darrell Latham from Otago University in the Otago Daily Times. Yet NZEI is still struggling to get the same commitment from the government.
Nationwide, thousands of parents and teachers have hit the streets protesting for the reinstatement of ECE budgets.
NZEI has put together a range of resources for teachers and others to support its campaign – details of which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/2claxqf and at ECEtogether.org.nz.
Already more than 2700 people have joined the campaign’s Facebook group.
The government has followed the ECE cuts by setting up an ECE taskforce, which NZEI fears will result in further reductions to the quality and funding of centres.
Find out more at ecetogether@nzei.org.nz .

Comments

[Kinderhaven Preschools]

Whilst the benefits of high quality early childhood education are well understood. The ongoing problem that we encounter, is the inability of some parents to get off the couch and bring their children to preschool. It is not uncommon for a child to be enrolled under our totally free system, then to attend so infrequently that the benefits to the child are not fully achieved. Very very frustrating as an educator.