16 November 2009

Social policy aimed at early intervention the key to educational success for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, writes Ross Homel.

The educational journey to university study begins early. Children learn first from their parents and siblings to lay the foundations of their cognitive, language, social and emotional development as well as their attitudes towards education in general and higher education in particular.

A current research project examining the attitudes of Indigenous families in NSW towards early childhood education being conducted by Jennifer Bowes from Macquarie University suggests that at least in families living in the city, parents have high educational aspirations for their children. Twenty-three of the 27 parents interviewed disclosed, without prompting, that they wanted their children to have a better education than they had had with several specifying university as their goal. However, the study found that there were significant barriers to these families establishing a satisfactory early childhood education experience for their children as a first step in this educational journey. Issues of physical, financial and cultural access meant that only a few families had been satisfied with their child's early experience of the educational 'system'.

Children born into environments where there is a lack of individual and family resources to participate fully in educational and social settings, and where parents have lower self-efficacy levels and communities and families have a lower collective efficacy, are likely to have their life chances considerably diminished. As well as affecting the ability to thrive in the early years, these disadvantages are likely to carry into adulthood. Moreover, vulnerable families are under-represented in their use of services, including first-time mothers' groups and other activities offered through Maternal and Child Health services.

It is therefore extremely disturbing that Australia lacks a national plan for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Without it, Australia will fail in increasing the proportion of disadvantaged students participating in higher education to 20 per cent by 2020, the critical national target set in the Bradley report.

All the research from Australia and overseas points to the power of 'getting in early,' particularly when services are responsive to the actual needs of children and parents from low SES backgrounds

A recent meta-analytic review, that Matthew Manning, Christine Smith and I conducted of rigorously evaluated early developmental programs (all unfortunately from the US) found particularly strong effects for educational outcomes in adolescence, years that are crucial for participation in higher education.

The review demonstrated the positive effect of social policies aimed at early intervention on the educational success of adolescents participating in such programs. Children who participated in one of the interventions, which included structured preschool programs, centre-based developmental day care, home visitation, family support services, and parent education, had on average scores that were about twice as good in adolescence as children in one of the control groups.

There were also strong positive effects for the other kinds of adolescent outcomes such as social participation, although the impact was not as large on average as for educational success. However, since such outcomes also have a substantial influence, direct or indirect, on the likelihood that a young person will move into higher education, all aspects of the meta-analysis highlight the potential of well-conducted early development programs to contribute to the achievement of the Bradley Review target.

The American research strongly suggests that one strategy Australia should use to achieve the Bradley target is to intensify investment in a wide variety of early in life programs that are based on the best research on 'what works' both in promoting positive child and youth development and in engaging effectively with socially disadvantaged families and communities. Nevertheless, it has to be acknowledged that the US has higher levels of social inequality than Australia, and a much less well-developed welfare system. It is possible therefore that the long-term effects of early in life programs in Australia will not be as marked as is found in American experiments.

Fortunately, although Australia and European countries have not yet developed a body of experimental evidence comparable with that from the US, we are able to draw on some promising high quality research studies from Australia and other non-US sources that use methods that are well suited to local conditions and throw considerable light on what works best in complex and challenging community settings.

Two such Australian programs are the Pathways to Prevention project in a cluster of culturally and linguistically diverse suburbs in a socially disadvantaged region of Brisbane, and the Communities for Children project conducted in 45 disadvantaged communities across Australia.

The first phase of the Pathways to Prevention project showed benefits for preschool and Grade 1 children in terms of their behaviour, language and social skills, and readiness for school, developmental attributes foundational to educational success.

FaHCSIA's Communities for Children project compared 10 intervention sites with 5 matched comparison sites (all highly disadvantaged areas) and found benefits for children's language skills. In addition there were improvements in parental self-efficacy (with a corresponding reduction in hostile parenting), living in a jobless household, and in community participation.

In both projects, interventions combined parent training, facilitated playgroups, early childhood education, extensive family support, and a variety of community development and other programs. Researchers have long concluded that combination programs are more effective for child outcomes, especially when they target two generations.

Research shows that new policies designed to overcome the systemic barriers that limit the life chances and higher education participation of children from low SES, rural, regional and indigenous backgrounds should encourage parents to give their children the best possible start in their education during the years prior to their entry into the formal school system.

On the basis of recent Australian experience, such programs should recognise that most of the barriers that reduce levels of participation in higher education lie not within parents or children but in inadequate or unresponsive services and systems. Fortunately we know a great deal in Australia about how to address these challenges.

What Australia needs now is a concrete plan for social policy intervention in early childhood to improve the educational achievements and aspirations of children. This plan should integrate the many current initiatives, and involve the development of an evidence-based, integrated, tiered system of universal, targeted and specialist services aimed at engaging and retaining the most vulnerable families.

Professor Ross Homel

Professor Ross Homel is a CHASS board member and foundation professor of criminology and criminal justice at Griffith University and director of the strategic research program. He participated in this week's 2009 HASS on the Hill event in Canberra, which engages humanities researchers with policy makers and parliamentarians. Professor Homel chaired the Social inclusion in education roundtable at the event.

Ross Homel
15 November 2009

 

This article was first published in Campus Review Vol. 19, No. 21, 20 October 2009

 

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