‘Yes, and …’ Universal 300 hours of free three-year-old preschool is a great first step for early childhood education.
The ACT Greens are thrilled to see the ACT Government honour our joint commitment to rolling out universal access to early childhood education for three-year-olds by 2024.
Per the Parliamentary and Governing Agreement, ACT Greens and ACT Labor agreed to deliver universal access to early learning for three-year-old children in the ACT. Together, we committed to providing our three-year-old children one day per week of early childhood education, 48 weeks a year, by 2024. As of the 1st of January this year, we have met that goal.
300 hours of free early childhood education is an important first step in furthering the ACT Greens’ 2020 commitment to accelerate the rollout of 15 hours a week of universal early childhood education for all three-year-olds in the ACT by the 2021 school year.
While the ACT Greens would have liked to see this scheme rolled out by the 2021 school year, we understand that ambitious initiatives like this one take time and money. We welcome this meaningful contribution to the support available for ACT parents and carers.
In its current form, the scheme already saves the average eligible family $1329. More importantly, free universal early childhood education takes the pressure off of families and caregivers dealing with the increasing cost of living. The more free early childhood education we provide for three-year-olds, the more we empower parents and carers to work, study and volunteer to support themselves and their families.
For women in particular, the affordability and accessibility of early childhood education play a huge part in whether or not they can participate in the workforce. We know the Commonwealth Government understood this when they rolled out free childcare during the first few months of the COVID pandemic. However, these measures were too soon dialled back, and early childhood educators were left high and dry as one of the first groups to lose access to Jobkeeper. When 96% of workers in early childhood education are women, it just doesn’t seem fair to pull back when we should be providing more support, not less.
As we’ve been saying since 2020, we want the ACT Government to follow the recommendations of the Productivity Commission and expand universal early childhood education for three-year-olds to at least 15 hours per week.
We may well need to get even more ambitious: recommendations from the Productivity Commission’s draft report into A path to universal early childhood education and care set 30 hours or 3 days per week as a fair target. As the cost of living increases, our parents, carers and early childhood educators are going to need more support. When the report comes out, I anticipate that the ACT Government is going to need to hold onto that ambition to provide affordable, accessible, world-class early childhood education for everyone.
Of course, the Productivity Commission’s recommendations are federal. In that vein, we earnestly encourage ACT Labor to join us in calling for more federal support and subsidies for early childhood education.
For now though, as the ACT Greens’ education spokesperson I commend the ACT Government for taking this vital first step in making early childhood education so much more accessible for Canberrans. I look forward to future early childhood education reforms that will cement Canberra’s place as a city where we can all learn and thrive from day dot.
– by Laura Nuttall MLA, ACT Greens Education spokesperson
