Free kindy and billion-dollar land grab for new schools in Queensland budget

Free kindergarten for 64,000 four-year-olds will save families $4600 a year in Queensland as the Palaszczuk government boosts education spending by 8 per cent in its 2023/24 state budget.

Education funding will rise 8 per cent in Queensland in 2023/24. Photo: iStock

A billion-dollar land grab to build more schools, free kindergarten and pay rises for teachers will boost Queensland’s education spending by 8 per cent next year.

Fifteen hours a week of free kindergarten for all four-year-olds will save families up to $4600 a year, from January 1, at a cost of $645m over four years.

Once the federal government matches the state spending, the total cost to taxpayers will double to $1.29bn.

Free school breakfasts will be offered to more students in poor communities, costing $2.7bn over the next two years.

Families will be given vouchers worth up to $150 to pay for swimming lessons for 30,000 children before they start school at a cost of $4.8m over two years.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said her government would ensure children in disadvantaged communities had a “good, healthy breakfast before they start school’’.

She said working mothers would benefit from the free kindergarten scheme for 64,000 four-year-olds attending preschools or long daycare centres.

Treasurer Cameron Dick said that more affordable kindergarten “puts more money into the pockets of working Queenslanders’’. “It gives more Queenslanders the opportunity to return to work, or to take on more work, further easing pressures,’’ he said in his budget speech.

Twelve schools will be built next financial year as part of $1.54bn in infrastructure spending on new classrooms, halls, laboratories and performing arts facilities. As enrolments soar, the government has set aside $968m over the next decade to set up a “rolling land fund’’ to buy land to expand existing schools or build new ones.

An extra $29m will be spent on playgrounds and tuckshops next financial year.

The budget papers reveal a blowout in school building costs, with an extra $43.3m set aside to pay for “cost escalation in the construction market’’ over the next three years.

Queensland needs to recruit 1600 teachers over the next 18 months to meet its 2020 target of hiring 6100 teachers by the end of next year. But it has already hired 1700 full-time teacher aides – ­exceeding the initial target of 1100 by 2025.

Overall education spending will jump 8.3 per cent this financial year to $17.8bn. Queensland teachers, already the highest paid in Australia, will have their wages pegged to inflation over the next three years, with superannuation payments set at 12.75 per cent of their salaries.