The book ‘Children: our future: a view of the critical struggle for early childhood care and education’ (Daily Maverick Books) by Barbara and Terry Bell was launched at the Museum for Childhood in Cape Town last week. In the article below — written while the national budget had still not been finalised — Terry casts light on its central theme.
////////////
A NATIONAL INVESTMENT guaranteeing a range of social and other benefits that equate to a return of between 1,300% and 1,700% over 30 or 40 years would seem to be a no-brainer for any government. But while it does exist, it continues to be largely ignored by politicians — a result, perhaps, of them being more concerned about the next election and retaining their seats. Short-termism is the name of their game. Besides, this long-term investment also challenges a range of cultural attitudes and prejudices.
Yet over the past 50 years and more, a vast quantity of data has emerged from carefully conducted studies that the investment in young children — as fellow human beings — results in very positive returns, socially and economically. It sums up the expression by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
So what does this investment entail? To produce remarkable results it involves the best possible preschool environment, including nutrition and parental/caregiver involvement, even for a very brief investment period.
In economic terms alone, two years of nursery school provide greater benefits and less costs to society in the long term. The initial costs, therefore, amount to a fairly minimal investment leading to significantly higher savings for society as a whole.
One of the finest illustrations that the best possible preschool facilities not only provide children, but society as a whole, with long-term benefits came in 2005 with the publication of the results of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Study in the US. It reinforced other, less extensive studies and much anecdotal evidence. A thoroughly researched programme that tracked two groups of children from deprived backgrounds for 40 years, High/Scope Perry involved 123 children living in relative poverty and regarded as being at high risk of school failure.
They were selected at random, with 58 assigned to a two-year preschool programme that involved — as all such programmes should — regular home visits to parents while their three to four-year-olds were involved in the programme. As with most of the children in the low-income neighbourhood, the other 65 children were not involved in any formal preschool activity. The intervention continued for just two years and the children in both groups experienced the same schooling and teachers in the following years.
From age three to 11, project staff collected data annually from both groups and then again, at ages 14, 15, 19, 27 and 40. At each such point, the data was carefully analysed and comprehensive reports were written. The study spanned the fields of health, education and family relationships along with later economic performance, arrest records and crime. In every area the individuals who attended the two years of high quality preschool, outperformed the non-programme group.
The major conclusion of the study was that “high-quality preschool programs (sic) for young children living in poverty contribute to their intellectual and social development in childhood and their school success, economic performance, and reduced commission of crime in adulthood”. In others words, in economic terms alone, two years of nursery school provide greater benefits and less costs to society in the long term. The initial costs, therefore, amount to a fairly minimal investment leading to significantly higher savings for society as a whole.
The High/Scope Perry programme was, however, relatively high cost, with well qualified and better paid teachers, dealing with small groups of children and who visited parents on a weekly basis during the two years of the half-day preschool sessions. In countries such as South Africa, with few high-quality facilities and equipment available, let alone too few qualified teachers, the High/Scope Perry programme may be seen as an ultimate standard to be aimed at. Yet the cost factor, once staffing and facilities are in place, can be discounted: a cost/analysis of the programme over the 40 years estimated that, for every $1 invested in the programme group, the return overall, to society was at least $13 and as much as $17.
This cost/benefit analysis is also borne out by several other studies, including those by Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman, who showed that the economic return from quality, preschool intervention was markedly higher than the return on later interventions. A classic case was published in 2014.
Twenty years after a group of stunted toddlers from disadvantaged homes in Jamaica had received two years of preschool help in a community health programme, their earnings as young adults were surveyed. It was found that they had caught up with a comparison group of well-fed children. But a similar group of under nourished children who were not included in the programme, lagged behind.
Also in the US, the federally funded Head Start programme that got under way in 1965 reported similar positive results. Other studies in different parts of the world, especially over the past 50 years, tend consistently to show the advantages physically, socially, intellectually, emotionally and economically of good quality, child-centred intervention in the early years. And what seems clearly proven is that the advantages extend beyond the first grades. Which is not to say that there are cases of children without any apparent advantages achieving exceptional results, academically and in every other way. But they are the exceptions and one can only speculate about whether they might have achieved even more with a preschool background.
However, in all cases, infant and child nutrition and sanitation are crucial factors. It was, in fact, malnourishment, disease and the squalid conditions forced on families by poverty that were the prime motivators for several movements that gave rise to modern early childhood care projects. And it is these that have shown that good early childhood care and education is perhaps the only sure-fire long term investment. Surely it is time that our government in particular woke up to this, having given itself a pat on the back 25 years ago for having ratified the UN child rights treaty. This delayed Budget Day may be as good a time as ever.
This article has been drawn from Terry Bell’s blog, Terry Bell writes. Used with permission.
FEATURED IMAGE: Dr Tshepo Motsepe, South Africa’s First Lady, launches the Kanana Early Childhood Development Centre in Kanana, North West, 20 March 2020. Image: GCIS on Flickr.