Professor Edward Melhuish, of both Oxford and Wollongong universities, hopes to bend ears in our Productivity Commission on the good economic sense of investing in early childhood education.

He did not need to convince anyone at Northside Early Centre on Tuesday, August 19, least of all the four-year-olds taking it in turns to solve puzzles on university-provided ‘smart’ boards and tables.

Winning the cooperation of governments may be tougher then wrangling pre-schoolers, but Prof Melhuish says educators and economists around the world now have the numbers on their sides.

“In England, we started a study with 3000 children in 1997 and followed them to when they left school,” he said.

“We looked at their environments, their home backgrounds, their preschool education, their childcare.

“Those who had pre-school education did better than those who didn’t and those who had high-quality pre-school education did the best of all.”

While that may not be rocket science, less expected were the health outcomes.

“It was a big surprise to us that, in these long-term follow-ups of the children who had high quality early childhood services, we are finding their physical health is better,” Prof Melhuish said.

“They are less stressed, less likely to develop obesity, less likely to smoke, to have heart disease – a whole range of things we had not anticipated.”

Then there are the findings of US Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman and others.

“There a number of economists around the world now who are realizing that this investment in early childhood has long term economic benefits for the whole of society,” Prof Melhuish said.

“The most well known is James Heckman.

“They show the savings on improved educational outcomes, employability, the better jobs people get, the less likelihood they will be involved in crime or to be dependent on benefits, mean that the whole of society gains.

“These gains are much greater than the cost of providing the early childhood education in the first place.

 “If you look at the most civilized societies, the ones with the most social cohesion etc, they are societies which invest in early childhood.”

Prof Melhuish said Australia’s Productivity Commission’s draft report on childcare did not pay enough attention to the benefits for children, as opposed to their parents.

“I hope to speak to your productivity commissioner about this, as the draft report is too much focused on early childhood services as a way of getting women into work,” he said.

“It is not paying adequate attention to the child development benefits, which will then have long-term benefits for the whole of society.”