Benefits of early childhood education
High quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) gives children the best start in life. It supports children’s learning, development, social skills, independence, and school transition.
Use the Starting Blocks ECEC finder to find quality services in NSW.
Helping brain development in young children
Children's brains are shaped by both their genes and their environment. Babies are born ready to learn, making over one million new brain connections every second during their first few years.
The early years are very important because brain development is shaped by a child’s surroundings and their interactions with people.
Vision and hearing pathways develop first. Then, language skills and thinking abilities start to grow. For example, a child’s vocabulary often grows four times bigger between ages 2 and 4.
As children grow, their brain connections become more complex. This supports their overall development and helps build a strong foundation for learning from an early age.
Research shows that quality early learning helps children develop social, cognitive, and emotional skills, leading to long-term educational, employment, and social benefits.
- [Child] Early childhood education is a place where children grow to learn and learn to grow.
- Play is the basis for a child's future development, representational play, the imaginary play. These foundations set up that child for adult life.
- [Educator] and purple.
- [Child 2] Purple.
- Early education is crucial for these areas of development because it gives the children opportunity and builds the foundations that are needed for future success and health and learning outcomes. Now we have the research to show that a child's brain is 90% developed by the age of five. And in that time, the first 2000 days framework, there is so much development that has to go on. Early education has to be the key. These centres are gold for development because they do offer these opportunities for all areas of a child's development, fine motor skills, with drawing, colouring in and painting, for gross motor skills, for jumping and playing and dancing around, as well as their social and emotional skills.
- [Woman] How can we help Owen to get that to stand up all by itself?
- [Melissa] So they are learning to be with others, they are learning to work with others and in groups, they are learning to share, take turns, listen to directions, people giving them boundaries and these are really foundational for the future. So confidence and independence is a big skill for a child to transition to school with. And if they've had that exposure to these experiences in early childhood education, that will certainly help that transition into the school environment We work in partnership, so if a parent does have a concern about their child, that concern is taken seriously and the child and family health nurse will escalate. We've got questionnaires where we check their development in more detail and make referrals.
Play-based learning
Quality play-based learning supports creativity, social skills, problem-solving, emotional regulation, language, and curiosity in child development.
Early learning programs and play environments are planned and guided by the Early Years Learning Framework. Enrolling your child in quality early learning offers a strong start and valuable skill development for lifelong growth.
Children learn through play. When children play they are exploring, taking risks, engaging their imagination, solving problems and learning about themselves and where they fit in the world. Quality early childhood education and care services create environments that encourage children to engage in play-based learning experiences that help them learn and grow.
Today we have the café, so the children were learning about taking turns, they were reading recipes, making cakes, they were entering orders, taking orders. They’re mimicking what their parents are doing, what they are seeing out in the community. In this type of play we’re really focusing on building lifelong skills for the children. We want them to have a good understanding of numeracy, of literacy, social skills, communication skills, and really just building them up so that they can be the best that they can be in their life.
Some parents might think, you know, our children just play all day, where does the learning come in but the play that occurs here is actually very, very carefully planned. It’s intentional and it’s very, very purposeful.
Some of the skills our children are learning in the mud kitchen include collaboration, negotiating roles, being imaginative, and being creative.
At our preschool we believe that technology is a powerful tool for learning. So, at the moment our children are learning Arabic through the ELLA (Early Learning Languages Australia) app. We utilise expertise of our children and families to teach us how to pronounce the words correctly. We want our children to learn there is different languages, there’s different cultures. We want them to appreciate and accept these differences.
These are just a few examples of how quality early childhood education and care experience can teach children important skills that will help them now and into the future as they transition to primary school and beyond.
For more about preschool and early learning experiences visit the NSW Department of Education’s website.
Making friends
From the ages of 3 to 5, many children want to play with others their age and begin to consider the feelings of others. At this age, children learn how to play together and might have a ‘best friend’.
Early learning encourages children to share and play with peers, helping them develop empathy and cooperation for positive relationships in preschool and beyond.
Spending time with peers helps children include others’ ideas and understand feelings. Although young children focus on themselves, interacting with peers supports empathy development, aiding lifelong friendships.
- I like painting and doing all of the creating stuff.
- I like stories because they have different pictures in them.
- I like playing with the pillow.
- Going to the sand pit.
- Playing with lego.
- We have an opportunity at this age to be able to ignite their passion for learning so that when they go to school, the foundation is laid and they already want to know things, they already want to be engaged in education.
- Look how big this is Hiro.
- Yeah.
- My favourite friends are Isaac and Imogen.
- Rosalyn and Ayushi.
- I play with Niro and Remy.
- I would definitely say the educators are a bit like extended family. I feel like we have really open dialogue with them. We have really nice conversations.
- I would tell them you should go to preschool instead of staying home. 'Cause you're gonna make new friends!
Developing independence
Early learning is often a child’s first time away from family, helping them build confidence and explore their identity in a new environment.
Between ages 3 and 5, children develop self-regulation skills like concentrating, sharing, and taking turns. Toddlers may show these skills by waiting for a toy or listening to someone speak.
Self-regulation skills help children build confidence, independence, and friendships. Parents, carers, and early learning educators play key roles in modelling healthy self-regulation.
- The children have had a huge amount of independence where we don't actually get to put the school bags away anymore and the children do.
- He's just grown in so many ways... confidence, socially.
- And she has started self-feeding and she now knows how to share because what this centre had provided her is confidence
- We feel that it's important to start at this ground level to prepare her for the future.
- It's really important. It does provide students with a lot of foundational skills that they'll need to learn in their literacy, numeracy, socialisation, and collaborative skills when they move into primary school.
- Lots of other learning stuff that we wouldn't do at home that they would do here.
- Gave her more opportunity to explore things and she's more creative and more curious about the world.
- She's showing that she's very musical as well, which is something that we never taught her.
- [Wolski] The importance of students having the ability to interact with students from other cultures can't be understated. It's very important for them to build those relationships with those students.
- [Christina] I think it's really important when looking for a preschool there is a quality rating system.
- [Darna] It will give you the ability to make a really good decision about where to send your child.
- [Christina] It's more of a holistic rating system where it's looking at the environment of the school, the leadership of the teachers.
- The educators here are highly trained. They're professionals. They're also passionate educators.
- [Christopher] And they have what they do at heart and we feel very much at home with them.
- [Rachel] And I've seen so many kids grow here. They have wonderful, wonderful teachers here.
Learning new routines
Attending early learning helps children adjust to routines outside the home, which supports their emotional and cognitive development. Familiar routines help children feel secure and comfortable by letting them know what to expect.
Routines help children feel safe and know what to expect, which supports positive behaviour. Early learning educators create daily routines with a balance of active/passive, indoor/outdoor, and child- and adult-directed experiences.
Routines are tailored to children’s ages to include rest, meet individual or medical needs, and suit their attention spans and developmental requirements.
Supporting transition to school
Early learning supports your child’s transition to primary school through various learning experiences. A positive transition helps children feel comfortable, motivated, build relationships, and develop a sense of belonging at school.
- [Child] Early childhood education, is the place where children grow to learn and learn to grow.
- I've been a teacher for seven or eight years. What I love most particularly in early education is the growth that you can see in the children from the start of the year to the end of the year.
- Even a koala?
- I think the benefits of early childhood education from the point of view of the kindergarten teachers is they are socially and emotionally in a better frame of mind to undertake all the learning activities that we put out for them. The first 2000 days of life is really important for young children because 90% of their brain development occurs. The attendance in early childhood education settings gives them that exposure when they come to primary school to really have that good foundational skills when they move into formal education in kindergarten and beyond. Okay, so have a look. This is where you're going to come to kindergarten next year. When they first attend in term one students are so excited to be at big school. It can be quite overwhelming for them, but I think if they've had a quality transition to school program the year before, it really pays dividends for term one for kindergarten teachers and the classroom in general.
- Really helped with independence for all of the kids here.
- Where we don't actually get to put the school bags away anymore and the children do.
- Going to the bathroom was another issue for him, he was not confident and shy but he had a good time when the teachers have taught him how to do few things.
- [Matt] I think the students that had been through early childhood education definitely come to school with a lot more confidence. It shows in the way that they undertake those learning activities and they can collaborate with their peers.
- But also to be in an environment where he has a lot of different friends that share similar interests but they can also enjoy the differences as well.
- Which one is dark green?
- This is dark green and this is dark green.
- So if any of my friends had a four year old son or daughter my advice would be to attend a formal early childhood setting and look at the quality rating of the centre, to go in and take a look and see what kind of activities are being run in there.
Last modified date
03/06/2026
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