Politicians feeling parental pressure for preschool education

Pressure on politicians to provide more funding for preschool education is growing.

Kerry Martin with daughter Piper McDonough, 3, at KU Centennial Parklands childcare centre in Kensington, Sydney. Picture: Britta Campion

Pressure on the major parties to provide funding certainty for preschool education programs and reform the childcare activity test that punishes vulnerable children the most is mounting ahead of the federal election with a new ­alliance of 27 organisations calling for change.

Sector groups are eyeing Scott Morrison’s budget next month for potential news of an extension to funding for four-year-olds that is due to expire this year and urging Bill Shorten to commit to reforming the Coalition’s broader childcare package.

With the introduction of the new childcare package last July, the activity test for subsidies was overhauled to focus on enticing parents — particularly mothers — back to work. Families whose principal carer is not working, studying, volunteering or looking for work for a minimum of eight hours each fortnight are not eligible for any childcare subsidy, although low-income families with a combined income below $67,000 are granted 12 hours each week of subsidised care.

The base entitlement is 18 hours if the child is in a preschool program.

Although federal Labor has promised universal access for three and four-year-olds to a quality, play-based preschool program — costing $10 billion over the next decade — it has not made any commitments about reforming the childcare package.

“Children who need a good start in life are not getting it purely by virtue of their parents’ circumstances,” The Parenthood executive director Alys Gagnon told The Australian.

“And while Labor is proposing to extend the 18-hour entitlement to three-year-olds with its policy, there has been no word on structural reform of the activity test for children who are not in one.”

Sydney violinist Kerry Martin, 40, has shepherded her five-year-old daughter Willow through preschool programs and now has three-year-old Piper also in one because it is offered at the eastern suburbs KU Centennial Parklands centre.

“The benefits were really clear to me with Piper because she just leapt into school so happily, it made the transition for her so much easier,” Ms Martin said. “And even though the programs have been great, we still can’t believe how expensive they are. It’s about $146 per day, per child. My whole income is spent on childcare basically, both with the fees and the other costs of raising children.”

The Coalition has argued against extending preschool programs to three-year-olds until states can be coaxed to fix attendance issues, although the trend is heading in the right direction.

The Early Learning: Everyone Benefits campaign is surveying every candidate for Labor, the Coalition and the Greens ahead of the next election, asking whether they support each of the seven policy priorities it has identified.

Early Childhood Australia chief executive Samantha Page said research shows “one in five Australian children start school developmentally vulnerable”.

“And (it shows) children who participate in early learning have half the rate of vulnerability of children who don’t attend any form of early learning before they start school,” she said.