Dominic Perrottet in bid for education control

Dominic Perrottet will call on the commonwealth to hand over responsibility for childcare and early childhood education to his state government.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: Richard Dobson

Dominic Perrottet will call on the commonwealth to hand ­responsibility for childcare and early childhood education to NSW, saying the current system is a “dog’s breakfast”.

In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, the NSW Premier will say the current division of ­responsibilities for education makes “no sense”.

He will argue that a greater emphasis on flexibility is needed to supercharge learning outcomes, but successful ­reform will not be achieved by “pumping more money” into the sector.

“Like every premier before me, I want our kids to have ­access to the best education in the world,” he will say. “But I refuse to believe the solution is to just pump in more money while continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done.

“I want to work with the commonwealth for NSW to take on full responsibility for childcare and early childhood education.”

The Australian revealed on Monday the NSW government was conducing a review into childcare costs to establish whether existing subsidies could be increased or whether barriers to access to these subsidies could be reduced, with an announcement expected in the new year.

In his speech, Mr Perrottet will say taking on full responsibility for education will “come at a significant cost to our budget so we would need to work through ways to address that”.

“It’s another service where confused design and funding hampers the outcome,” he will say. “The point here is to allocate services to governments in a way that actually makes sense.”

Mr Perrottet will say education must be designed around students and their families, and point to the way the pandemic has accelerated changes around work and family life priorities.