An historic new era of affordable and universal childcare is born

The economic return on early years investment is much higher than for any other stage in a child’s life, writes Fergus Finlay

WAS dismissive of the budget last week, with its fiver here and fiver there. It was a non-event, a lost opportunity. But in one way it may come to be seen as historic.

We’ve had famous — and infamous — budgets, and landmarks made before budget day, like the announcement of free second-level education by Donogh O’Malley. There have been memorable budgetary moments, like the introduction of free travel by Charles Haughey, and the introduction of payments for lone parents by Frank Cluskey. Both have stood the test of time. They aren’t just lasting monuments to the politicians that devised them, but have underpinned a deep and lasting cultural and social change.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone joins that list, now. The introduction, and development over time, of a proper national and universal scheme of affordable childcare is genuinely historic.

It faces up to the reality that has been largely ignored since we began talking about childcare in Ireland — that it isn’t possible to do it properly without subsidy. The design of a national programme, in the short time she has been in office, proves that she and her Department can really punch above their weight.

The Zappone Scheme, as it may come to be called, is the first time that we have adopted a universal approach to early-years childcare, with the aim of both making it affordable and significantly improving its quality.

Of course, the money available is not enough to do that in one fell swoop, but that was never going to be possible, unless we struck oil.

But the next year is an historic opportunity to lay down real foundations for a scheme that can support children and help them to grow, from the moment maternity leave ends to the moment junior school begins, and even beyond that.

We probably need to nail one thing straight away. Almost from the moment the announcement was made, the airwaves were full of talk about discrimination. This new scheme, apparently, discriminates against stay-at-home mums.

Now, there is no doubt whatever that women who choose to work at home, doing some of the most demanding, emotionally challenging and creative work, are discriminated against time and again. The contribution they make to the State is never recognised.

But there is no discrimination against them in this scheme. For starters, it is open to all children, whether their parents are working or not.

But this is a scheme for children. It’s not a scheme for working mums, or stay-at-home mums, or working parents, or grandparents. It’s a scheme to provide the sort of childcare from which children can benefit and grow, and to make that childcare more and more affordable to everyone, over time.

Stay-at-home parents, just like working parents, can already avail of the existing, free pre-school year. And thousands do. Exactly the same thing will apply as this new scheme is rolled out.

The other criticism I’ve read of the scheme is that the subsidy will only be paid to appropriately registered centres or child-minders. To be honest, I’d be outraged if it were any other way. It’s nonsensical for anyone to suggest that the care of children should be entrusted to any entity that isn’t able or willing to comply with basic norms and standards.

A few years ago, I took part in a group that advised the then children’s minister to start making this investment. We argued for it on social grounds, because children need, and are entitled to, the best start in life. But we also argued for it on economic grounds.

Our group, led by Professor Eilis Hennessy, of UCD, published a report that pointed out that the economic case for investing in young children is now well-established. The research shows that the rate of economic return on good-early years investment is significantly higher than for any other stage in a child’s life.

Cost-benefit analyses of high-quality early-care and education programmes in the US have estimated returns of up to $16 for every dollar invested.

Of course, that return on investment doesn’t happen overnight — or even between one election and the next, which is one of the reasons why it’s never been politically attractive.

But back in the day, it was also seen as high-risk, politically, to insist that secondary students stop charging fees — but that turned out to be a seminally important decision, one that ultimately positioned Ireland very well in economic terms.

But if you want to know the real reason why this investment is so important, there’s a fascinating book that ought to be required reading for a wide range of policy makers. It’s called Cherishing All the Children Equally? (the question mark matters), and it represents a pulling-together of a huge amount of data and analysis by academics in the ESRI and Trinity College.

Most of the data comes from the Growing Up in Ireland Study, a unique long-term study of children in Ireland.

I’ve started reading it — and I’ll be talking about it again, on the urging of an angry colleague of mine. She sent me extracts from one of the chapters, and her accompanying comment was “talk about a loaded dice and a vicious cycle of perpetuating inequality”.

The chapter is about how children get integrated (or don’t) into primary school. Just think about that for a minute. Integrated? We all just went to primary school, didn’t we? It was great, wasn’t it? The best little primary education system in the world, a place where all the children were equal, and everyone got the same start in life?

Except, when you read chapter 7, it’s not quite so simple. Children from middle-class backgrounds have significantly more positive attitudes to school, and better language skills, than those from working-class groups, with the lowest scores found among the children of non-employed families.

“Even taking account of social class,” the chapter says, “mother’s education has an additional influence, with higher skills and more positive dispositions among five-year-olds with graduate mothers. Household income when the child was age nine months old is significantly related to later school preparedness, but the size of the effect is much smaller than for parental education or social class, reflecting the fact that income levels are likely to be less stable than education or class.”

It’s as stark as that. Children start primary school unequal and behind. They stay that way throughout their schooling, which is likely to be shorter for that reason. You start behind, you drop out early. You drop out early, you never catch up.

Investing in children when they are pre-school is one of the only ways to fix that. When you look at it that way, the only question left is — why has it taken us so long?