Our Children Have Access to Quality Education Support

Also covers community priority area – Our parents have access to employment

Purpose
Our children have access to quality early education as a result of sufficient available Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) places.

Objectives

Quantify the gap (supply and demand) in available Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) places and understand the constraints to creating more places, so that responses can grow the appropriate number of places, enabling more children to access quality early education.

The project is based on the assumption that children who participate in quality early educational support will be more ready to start school ready to learn and on track to thrive.

Based on significant waitlists, the project assumes that by quantifying the demand for childcare places, more places can be made available to meet the demand, enabling more children to access quality early educational support.

Community Identified Need

Previously two key inhibitors have been identified to children accessing early education: availability and affordability.

In response to affordability, in 2024, to support every child have a high-quality start to their education, the Queensland Government introduced free kindy at 15 hours per week, for 40 weeks per year, for Queensland children attending a government-approved kindergarten program. https://earlychildhood.qld.gov.au/freekindy#/search

In relation to availability, our local challenge is enabling sufficient childcare and kindy places to meet demand.

Kindergarten programs are offered in long day care services and sessional kindergarten services. Sessional kindergartens operate during school hours each school term, whereas long day care services can provide a kindergarten program as part of their extended hours of care.

Stakeholders

Local Childcare and Kindy Service Providers
Restacking the Odds (RSTO)
Education Queensland
Communities for Children (C4C)
Thriving Queensland Kids Partnership (TQKP)

Measures

↑ % pre-school enrolments

↑ % children developmentally on track (prep year)

Methodology

Identify need – engagement with community to identify issues from a lived-experience perspective
Define issue – consultation with practitioners to further understand and validate the need
Identify physical and actual capacity, waitlists and barriers to increasing available places using a comprehensive ECEC survey
Follow-up with centres to deeper dive into specific findings for improved understanding of barriers to increasing available childcare and kindy places
Analyse data from survey responses received, and compile findings report to be shared with ECEC’s for approval to share
Findings shared with wider community for collective understanding and co-design of solution development.

Activity to Date

ECEC surveyed to quantify number of places and demand
ECEC insights synthesised to identify challenges to expansion
The Early Years, Together in Action Event Wednesday 21 February 2024, attended by 60 early childhood stakeholders, endorsed continued investment in the initiative to quantify and support investment into new childcare places to meet demand.

Resources

Next Actions

Co-design solutions and seek investment interest, to match supply and demand of childcare places.
Further understand participation in ECEC’s, and any barriers to participation, particularly for those families and children experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage.
Considerations of access to regular, ECEC data to support sector wide identification and understanding of any unmet needs of children and families and to inform further decision-making and improvements.

Our Children Have Access to Quality Education Support

Childcare and Kindy Access