Comment: Billions of dollars are spent by the government each year on early childhood education—$3 billion was earmarked for the sector in the 2025 Budget. Despite this investment, there has been surprisingly little research in Aotearoa New Zealand exploring how childcare affects children’s development over time.
Evidence from international studies suggests early childcare, such as daycare and preschool, supports development and wellbeing, which is why many governments provide subsidies. However, there’s still debate about the extent of the benefits gained and whether they’re shared equally among all children.
My PhD research suggests that although attending early childcare can support children’s development in the short- and medium-term, these benefits do not always last.
Using data from the Growing Up in New Zealand study, which has been tracking the lives of more than 6,000 Kiwi kids since 2009, I explored links between childcare and child development. This involved digging into the data to examine changes in early communication, language, numeracy, literacy, behaviour, and social skills from nine months to eight years.
My analysis showed attending early childcare programmes was often linked to short-term positive outcomes at two and four and a half years, compared with children in “non-formal care”—that is, being cared for by family and whanau.
At two, children in centre-based care (daycare, kindergarten, and preschools) performed better on language development. Two-year-olds in either centre or home-based care (where care is provided by certified caregivers in a home) also had fewer “internalising behaviours”, such as being worrisome or unhappy.
At four and a half, those in centre or home-based care also had fewer of these internalising behaviours. Additionally, children in centre-based care had, on average, better scores in school readiness and fewer “externalising behaviours”, such as disobedience and hot tempers, compared with those in home-based care.
However, the associations were not always positive or long-lasting. For example, some children in certified home-based care showed more challenging behaviours at four and a half years.
Children who spent more years in centre-based care were also more likely to show behaviour problems at four and eight years. One explanation for this is that attending care may be a stress factor for some children. The longer they’re exposed to this stress, the greater the chances of poorer behavioural outcomes.
Importantly, I found many of the early short-term benefits linked to childcare were no longer visible by eight when children were attending primary school. By this age, there was no significant difference when it came to internalising behaviours and “prosocial behaviours”, such as being helpful or considerate of others.
I also looked at whether the associations between childcare and child development differed depending on a child’s ethnic or socioeconomic background. The results here were mixed: some children appeared to do better on some measures, but others did worse.
One key factor I wasn’t able to explore was the link between child development and the quality of early childcare. Child-to-teacher ratios, the curriculum taught, and the resources available are among things that have the potential to influence the quality of the learning environment and whether childcare benefits are gained and sustained. This is an area where more research is needed.
If the goal of early childcare is to promote child development, then the results of my research raise interesting questions about how early childcare can be improved to support long-term development, especially for children from different socioeconomic backgrounds and for Māori and Pacific children, who have not been well-served by the education system.
As childcare policies and services continue to evolve, it’s important to consider not only the type of childcare that children receive, but also how childcare fits within the child’s wider family, and cultural and socioeconomic environments. Future research should investigate these complexities to inform practices that truly enhance development outcomes for all children.
This article was originally published on Newsroom.
Phillip Riley recently completed his PhD at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His thesis research focused on early childcare and child development.