{"id":4723,"date":"2022-07-28T11:10:32","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T01:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/?p=4723"},"modified":"2022-07-28T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T03:19:50","slug":"preschool-reform-promises-our-children-a-better-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/2022\/07\/28\/preschool-reform-promises-our-children-a-better-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Preschool reform promises our children a better future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Children\u2019s health, development and wellbeing will benefit enormously from the free year of early childhood education and care announced in Victoria and New South Wales in June. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In an opinion piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, Professor Sharon Goldfeld, Director of the Centre for Community Child Health, and Australia\u2019s National Children\u2019s Commissioner, Anne Hollonds\u2019, reflect on how this game-changing reform will help to improve children\u2019s wellbeing and provide economic benefits to families and communities.<\/p>\n<p>Australia\u2019s future wellbeing depends on the investment in children\u2019s development today. The recent reform announcement, promising one year of free early learning in NSW and Victoria, is a positive step towards acknowledging the importance of play-based learning on children\u2019s healthy development.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Hollonds and Prof Goldfeld write about how play-based learning is exactly what benefits children the most during the early years, and that investing early matters.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cThe evidence behind brain development tells us that investing early makes a real difference to children\u2019s learning and wellbeing. It builds social and emotional skills that are foundations for academic learning, relationships and wellbeing in later life.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In addition to making early childhood education and care available, other factors must also be addressed to ensure the reform has its intended impact.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0\u201cWe need to ensure that it is high-quality and accessible, with high participation rates where it is needed most. If this can be achieved, it will give children from disadvantaged backgrounds a much better chance of an equitable start.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/national\/game-changing-reform-promises-a-better-future-for-our-children-20220617-p5auik.html\"><strong>Access the full Sydney Morning Herald article<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prof Sharon Goldfeld and Anne Hollonds reflect on preschool reform in Victoria. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":4736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8971],"tags":[12000,26960,26958,26989],"class_list":["post-4723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-childrens-health-and-development","tag-childrens-mental-health","tag-early-years-services","tag-preschool-reform"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4723"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4746,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4723\/revisions\/4746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/ccch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}