Enhancing Education
The NT Emergency Response focused on school enrolment and attendance, resourcing additional teachers, teacher training, provision of physical infrastructure and school nutrition programs. These measures are important but will not be sustainable or effective unless supplemented by measures to improve “school readiness” of:
- communities through social cohesion and inclusion;
- systems that encourage and support high standards and local governance;
- services that are appropriately resourced with a culturally competent and skilled workforce;
- families and children that are enabled and empowered with appropriate resources, services and information to support the health, development and education of their children.
International policy and research advocate the importance of health and education systems being integrated4 5 for optimal outcomes, yet research on interventions designed to achieve this is very limited. Menzies has a strong alliance with Charles Darwin University’s School for Social and Policy Research (SSPR) to bring together national and international expertise in the fields of child development, education, health and rigorous research methodologies, initiated by a recognition of the enormity and the complexities of “school readiness” in the context of remote Indigenous Australians. Menzies and its partners have made significant progress in developing a research agenda to improve the life and learning outcomes for the early years around the health-education nexus aimed at:
- Building the knowledge base of educational interventions proven effective through scientifically sound research (from small demonstration projects to large-scale replications); and
- Encouraging the widespread use of such proven interventions within policy and practice by creating a research enterprise founded on the principles of collaboration and community extension.
The Australian Government recently recognised the critical importance of the early years by investing in the Nurse Family Partnership home visiting program for Indigenous families on the basis of compelling and convincing evidence of effect from randomised control trials in the USA6. There is only one other intervention in the years before school begins that has been so rigorously tested and found to lead to substantial long-term benefits: high quality, centre-based preschool. The best examples are the High Scope/ Perry Preschool7 and Carolina Abecedarian Early Childhood Intervention. These studies confirm the lasting benefits of high quality preschool over two years8 9. However, high quality features such as educationally appropriate curriculum, teacher competence and intensity of contact for centre based and home visiting components are known to be critical factors impacting on the effectiveness of the preschool program, and make delivery of a successful service very difficult in settings like remote NT communities. We have established a study to evaluate the NT’s Mobile Preschool Program, which will directly inform Australian Government and Northern Territory Government policy directions. This research, and other potential studies like it, addresses factors that go well beyond attendance and enrolment.
4. Low, MD, Low, BJ, Baumler, ER, Huynh, PT (2005) Can education policy be health policy? in Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law, 30 (6): 1131-1162
5. (2000) Starting Strong I: Early Childhood Education and Care. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
6. Olds, DL, Robinson, J, Pettitt, L, Luckey, DW, Holmberg, J, Ng, RK, Isacks, K, Sheff, K, Henderson, CR, Jr. (2004) Effects of Home Visits by Paraprofessionals and by Nurses: Age 4 Follow-Up Results of a Randomized Trial in Pediatrics 114, 6: 1560-8
7. Schweinhart, LJ (2006) The High/Scope Perry preschool study through age 40: summary, conclusions and frequently asked questions. Ypsilanti: High/Scope Educational Research Foundation
8. Karoly, LA, Kilburn, MA, Cannon, JS (2005) Early Childhood Interventions: Proven Results, Future Promise. RAND
9. Lynch, RG (2004) Exceptional Returns: Economic, Fiscal, and Social Benefits of Investment in Early Childhood Development. Washington D.C.: Economic Policy Institute