What are our political leaders early learning policy priorities?

The Federal Government, through the Child Care Subsidy (CCS), is the primary funder early learning and care in Australia. So, our politicians’ policy priorities have a big impact on the affordability, quality and availability of early learning across Australia. 

In the lead up to each Federal Election, Goodstart writes to the major parties seeking their policy commitments on early learning and care. We then share these responses with our network and families before the election, so everyone is better informed on early learning policies ahead of polling day. 

Goodstart is strictly apolitical and will never recommend a vote for one side or the other. But we are advocates for better policies for children and families and we engage regularly with all sides of politics. 

In the lead up to the election, we have invited candidates in key seats to visit our centres as well as meeting with Ministers, Shadow Ministers, members of the Greens and key cross benchers to advocate for more investment in children’s early years.  

Goodstart recognises the substantial investments by successive Governments to make quality, inclusive early learning more accessible and affordable in recent years. But more needs to be done including  

• Participation rates by children from low-income families and the regions are lagging, even though they are more likely to start school developmentally vulnerable.  
• While supply of places meets demand in most communities, around nine per cent of children live in communities with little or no supply, particularly in rural and regional areas.
• Delivering quality ECEC requires a stable and professional workforce. Turnover across the sector, while improving, are still too high and well above pre-COVID levels.
• Funding for inclusion support for children with additional needs lags what is needed, with providers having to make up the shortfall from fee revenue, or children face exclusion. 
• Affordability improved for most families following the Child Care Subsidy changes in 2022 and 2023 but is still a big challenge for many families, particularly low-income families.
• Underfunded regulators have not been doing enough to ensure all services deliver safe, quality learning environments for all children.

The recent Productivity Commission report on early learning lays out a sensible, staged and achievable pathway to build a high quality universal early learning system for Australia that is accessible, within the means of all families, equitable and inclusive for all children. 

Goodstart wants to see the next Parliament continue to move along this pathway towards a universal early learning system. This has the potential to set children up for the best possible start to learning and life and give them the best chance to thrive in school. 

We are asking for policy commitments to: 

1. Support and fund increased wages for educators and make the 15% wage subsidy permanent (it is currently only funded for two years).
2. Support the $1 billion Building Early Education Fund to improve access to early learning in unserved and underserved markets, particularly in rural and regional areas.
3. Improve affordability of early learning and care by increasing Child Care Subsidy rates by 10%, marking early learning effectively free for low-income families (as recommended by the Productivity Commission).
4. Reduce out of pocket costs for families by increasing the hourly rate cap on Child Care Subsidy and reducing the default withholding rate from 5% to 0%, so families have more of the subsidy in their pockets each week.
5. Improve inclusion support for children with additional needs by increasing funding for additional educators to cover the full cost of support, and ensuring funding is demand driven to cover all children who need it and not capped.
6. Support the Three-Day Guarantee to improve access for children experiencing disadvantage.
7. Support access to high quality preschool programs for 3-5 year olds (i.e. the two years before school) in both preschools and long day care centres.
8. Improve Government oversight to ensure early learning and care is high quality, safe and accessible, with better funded regulators and a powerful new National ECEC Commission to hold poor performers to account.

We will let you know what they have to say in the week before voting day, so you are better informed on where our politicians stand on early learning.