Read Aloud Australia

Policy Statement - 31 January 2004

Early childhood development is the foundation of lifelong learning.

Learning does not begin on the first day of school. It starts on the first day of life. And it represents the first rung on the ladder of opportunity.

Read Aloud Australia is the first announcement in Labor's early childhood initiative. It is a comprehensive plan to encourage parents to read to their children.

A Labor Government will invest $80 million in our future – giving both parents and children the help they need to develop a culture of reading.

The research is compelling – 75 percent of a child's brain develops in the first five years of life and half of all the developmental potential of a child is established by the age of four.

That's why investing in early childhood development is an investment in a better society.

Read Aloud Australia will build the literacy skills and learning capacity of our youngest Australians. This is the best start they can have in life.

Labor's plan includes:

• Launching a BookStart program to issue up to three free books to the parents of every new baby to get them on the path to regular reading. We expect to issue over half a million books every year.
• Building a parental literacy network in Australia so parents have the skills they need to read to their children. It will help more than 4500 parents every year.
• Appointing Read Aloud Ambassadors and establishing a Read Aloud Week to emphasise the importance of reading to children from an early age.
• Work with State and Territory Governments to develop comprehensive neonatal screening for hearing and sight.
• Working with the States to include early reading programs in the Personal Health and Development Record Books (better known as the Yellow Book or the Blue Book).

Australia's great children's author, Mem Fox, has agreed to be our first Read Aloud Ambassador.

It was Mem Fox who first encouraged me to read three books a night to my children. It's the best advice I've had and the greatest gift I can give to my two boys.

I want opportunity for all in Australia. Reading aloud to our children is a great place to start.

Early learning begets later learning and early success breeds later success just as early failure breeds later failure. (James J Heckman, PhD, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences)

Foreword

All parents hope to give their children the best possible start in life. Labor will help Australian parents do just that.

The international research is compelling – learning starts on the first day of life. 75 per cent of a child's brain develops in the first five years of life. Half of all the developmental (including intellectual) potential of a child is established by age four.

Because children develop learning skills at a very early age we need to focus on quality education and care in the early years.

Families with young children need our support. Labor will equip parents with the resources and skills to help our children to learn.

Early education is a responsibility of the whole community. Everyone and every sector must contribute, including families. Our approach is to build a virtuous network which makes the most of early education efforts across the whole community.

Having healthy, safe and happy children is important in itself. But resilient, well developed children, eager to learn, are key to a secure and prosperous future for our country.

Investing in children today is investing in a better society for the future. For every $1 spent on services that foster child development, $4 to $7 is saved on interventional Government services later in life (Schweinhart, L. H. et al Significant Benefits 1993).

Labor's Early Childhood Initiative

Labor is committed to an early childhood initiative that will establish new ways of thinking about our children's early development and build new ways of delivering children's services.

Labor will promote universal access to local and flexible services for children and families based on innovative delivery of quality education and care in the early years.

Labor will ensure that services in early education and care are delivered to maximise results. Funding and local decision making will be flexible so as to ensure the efficient and innovative delivery of services. Our focus will be on getting results and taking responsibility. Labor will support and actively encourage community based delivery of services. What matters is what works.

Our children are the responsibility of our whole society, not just a single sector. Our approach will be to maximise effort across all parts of society – Government, business, community organisations and within families themselves. Labor's vision is for all areas of Government and the community to contribute to the task of early education.

To this end, Labor will expect the State and Territory Governments to get behind this important national effort. This means ensuring existing State and locally-funded services are maintained and new efforts are supported. Under Labor's approach federal funds will be leveraged with other providers, maximising the pool of resources devoted to early education.

Read Aloud Australia

Read Aloud Australia is the first announcement in Labor's early childhood initiative. Read Aloud Australia will help families, and indeed the community, to develop the literacy skills of very young children.

Specifically, over the next four years a Labor Government will:

• Provide a BookStart program that will issue free books to the parents of every new baby.
• Build a parental literacy network in Australia so parents have the skills they need to read to their children.
• Appoint "Read Aloud Ambassadors" and establish "Read Aloud Week" to emphasise the importance of reading to children from a very young age.
• Work with State and Territory Governments to develop comprehensive neonatal screening for hearing and sight.
• Work with States and Territories to include early reading programs in the Personal Health and Development Record Books (better known as the Yellow Book or the Blue Book).
  

Building for Tomorrow

BookStart

Encouraging parents to read aloud to their children from a very young age is crucial to their early development. Regular book sharing helps to build the foundations of lifelong learning and develop children's literacy skills. It also supports the natural love and intimacy between parents and children.

Labor will establish a national BookStart program that will give up to three new books for parents to read to their young children.

All parents will receive a free BookStart Kit for their new born baby at the time of their first maternal child health nurse visit. The Kit will include a free story book and information about the importance of reading to children. It will invite parents to join local libraries, toy libraries and playgroups. The Kit will also promote parenting education.

Parents will receive a second book when they join their local library, and there will be a third book for parents accessing some parental information and courses.

Labor will invite publishers and retailers to support BookStart with additional contributions and sponsorship. The private sector will be encouraged to join the early education effort through book give aways and story telling support.

The BookStart Kit will be more than a book bag. It will be a resource into a parent literacy network. Through BookStart, local authorities and public libraries will join the literacy network as partners and commit to additional effort and resources.

Labor commits $35.0 million

Parental literacy

Research clearly shows that a family environment that promotes learning through a variety of mediums, including reading, improves the educational development of young children. The evidence also indicates that children from families where learning is not promoted often have difficulties in making a successful transition to school. In particular, children whose parents have low levels of literacy often have limited literacy skills themselves.

Labor will establish a comprehensive network of outreach workers across sectors and agencies to help parents who have trouble reading to their children. This will involve leveraging existing resources in Department of Family and Community Services, Centrelink and the Job Network to find the people who need the most help. Local partnerships using outreach workers attached to local community organisations will work in local communities and targeted zones to deliver literacy tuition and support to parents.

Labor will build the network using locally based community organisations and social enterprises. Efforts such as the Learning for Life program from the Smith Family, the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters by the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Engaging Fathers Project at the University of Newcastle will be encouraged and supported. At all times, funding will be flexibly administered to provide the maximum rate of delivery innovation.

The program will be managed across 35 regions (covering all of Australia) allowing for flexible solutions to local problems. In a typical region, funding would allow for the following:

• Two parental literacy hubs based in appropriate community settings each employing an outreach worker (that is, two workers per region). They will work in local suburbs and in homes helping families develop their literacy, for instance, organising volunteer reading coaches to help parents.
• Twenty volunteer outreach tutors/readers providing good local services where they are needed most.
• A flexible pool of funds for literacy training.

Labor commits $40.0 million

Read Aloud Ambassadors and Read Aloud Week

Positive role modelling is key to literacy development. Encouraging families and communities to read aloud to children from a very young age will be an important element of Read Aloud Australia.

Labor will encourage positive role models across the community to participate in a national Read Aloud effort. Read Aloud Australia will unite authors, community leaders and sports stars as Ambassadors for the importance of reading aloud to very young children.

Labor's first Read Aloud Ambassador will be celebrated Australian children's author Mem Fox.

Labor will also establish "Read Aloud Week" to complement Book Week. "Read Aloud Week" will be the annual culmination of activities across the country coordinated centrally with Government assistance.

Through Read Aloud Australia Labor will signal the importance of positive role modelling for the early reading years.

Labor commits $5.0 million

Neonatal screening of hearing and sight

Screening of hearing and sight is an important part of monitoring the development of babies and young children. Our children's abilities to hear and see determine the way in which they develop skills such as literacy. Significantly, whilst hearing and sight are important to the development of literacy, many children who cannot hear or see still develop literacy.

Technology is available for neonatal screening of hearing and many hospitals are implementing this technique. This screening is routinely followed up by examinations by Maternal and Child Health nurses and doctors as babies grow.

Labor expects the States and Territories to support the early childhood initiative by building on their existing neo natal screening in hearing and sight. NSW, for example, already has a comprehensive neonatal hearing screening program. Labor will work with the States to extend and deepen these initiatives as part of Labor's early education package.

Early reading included in Personal Health and Development Record Book

Each State and Territory currently supplies Personal Health and Development Record Books to new parents (often known as the Yellow Book or the Blue Book). The books currently differ in scope and purpose between States and Territories.

Labor is committed to improving the system of Personal Health and Development Record Books in cooperation with State and Territory Governments to include intellectual development.

Labor will expect the States to join with Read Aloud Australia by enhancing their Yellow and Blue Books to include early reading efforts. This would include additional recording of:

• Neonatal screening and testing
• Details of reading activity and literacy development over time, including parental efforts
• Records of home visiting, parental contributions and attendance at parenting assistance events
• Information for parents about local resources, information and services relevant to their child's development

Costings

Initiative	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	Total
Bookstart	8.75	8.75	8.75	8.75	35.0
Parent Literacy Network	2.5	7.5	12.5	17.5	40.0
Read Aloud Australia	1.25	1.25	1.25	1.25	5.0
Totals	12.5	17.5	22.5	27.5	$80.0m