Families with kids juggling full-time work may have been alarmed by media reporting this week, suggesting “too much” time in early childhood education and care could harm their child’s development.

Data from a major Australian study, the First Five Years project, was released by the Department of Education last December. It tracked 274,000 Australian children and linked their experiences of early childhood education to their development in the first year of school.

The report found those who spent 40 hours or more a week in care were slightly more likely to be “developmentally vulnerable”, compared to the national average. But the data also showed that kids who attend formal care – which includes childcare and preschool – had notably better outcomes compared to those who didn’t attend at all.

Importantly, the report confirmed what we’ve long known: quality of care is still a stronger and more consistent predictor of a child’s outcomes than the number of hours they spend there. And parenting can be more important than both quantity and quality of childcare.

So, here’s why fixating on a “magic number” is not helpful – and what to focus on instead.

First, what does ‘developmental vulnerability’ mean?

The study uses data from the 2018 Australian Early Development Census, which reports on children’s developmental vulnerability, across five domains:

language and cognitive skills

communication skills and general knowledge

physical health and wellbeing.

A child is considered “developmentally vulnerable” in a domain if they score within the lowest 10% of the national........

© The Conversation