Three-year-old Preschool Return on Investment Analysis

viii Three-year-old Preschool Return on Investment Analysis Methodology for estimating costs and benefits As previously outlined, the costs modelled for the Royal Commission’s Interim Report, and the benefits calculated for this additional analysis, draw upon a common set of assumptions regarding the eligible population, the uptake of preschool, the period of transition, and the attributes of the. [...] To this end, the Royal Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Treasury and Finance and the Department for Education, engaged Deloitte Access Economics to conduct an extension of the modelling to explore the benefits of universal three-year-old preschool. [...] For example, the location and proximity of services, the family’s cultural background, and features of employment - including employment sector, hours of employment, and the income structure of the family, such as the number of earners. [...] 1.3 Structure of this report The remainder of this report is structured as follows: • Section 2 provides an overview of the literature on three-year-old preschool impacts • Section 3 discusses two empirical approaches taken to estimate the benefits of three-year-old preschool • Section 4 outlines the methodology for estimating the costs and benefits of the analysis • Section 5 presents the results. [...] However, they urge caution in applying the findings from these studies to the Australian context, due to the age of the early evidence such as Perry Preschool and CPC; the small scale of many of the RCT studies; and the potential for selection bias with larger scale observational studies.