Better child care at non-profit centres

By Adele Horin
Sydney Morning Herald
9th February 2006

Private for profit child-care centres produce poorer outcomes for children than non-profit centres, a visiting expert says.

Gordon Cleveland, associate professor in economics at the University of Toronto, and an authority on measuring quality child care, said yesterday that his research on hundreds of centres showed a 10 to 15 percent “quality boost; in non-profit centres in Canada over private centres.

He said the measurably higher quality was due to higher staff motivation and effort, not necessarily to different class sizes or child-staff ratios.

“This means a big difference between having good child development and average child development’, he said.

Dr Cleveland is a speaker at the National Investment for the Early Years conference being held in Sydney.

He said a cost benefit study of good quality child care in Canada had shown the benefits exceeded the costs by a margin of two to one. There were measurable child development benefits, including enhanced school performance and increased incomes to families through mothers being able to work.

Higher quality centres produced better outcomes. He said many things contributed to quality in a centre, including regulated staff ratios, levels of teacher education and the money available to the centre. His recent research showed motivation and effort also mattered.

“Non-profit produced higher quality outcomes perhaps because they have a greater orientation in their philosophy towards development of children and that feeds through to the staff’, he said.

The conference heard yesterday how the New Zealand Government would provide 20 hours of free preschool to every three to four year old by 2007, which many experts have urged the Australian state and federal governments to follow.

Helen May, profesclub phoenixsor of education at he University of Otago, said the government had also committed to ensuring only trained teachers worked in child care by 2012.