Early Childhood Council recommends 20 free be resisted by both early childhood centres and the parents of preschoolers

For more information contact ECC President Margie Blackwood on 021 - 913535

The Early Childhood Council (ECC) has sent a news brief to early childhood education centres recommending 20 free hours be resisted by both early childhood education centres and by the parents of preschoolers.

ECC President Margie Blackwood said the move was made with great reluctance and followed 18 months of pleading with Government to change the policy.

'The main point we tried to make to Government was that 20 free is the biggest threat to the quality of early childhood education since the Before 5 reforms set up the current system in the 1980s.' said Ms Blackwood.

'This is because most centres cannot afford to deliver 20 free without cutting teacher numbers and/or children's programmes.'

The problem was that the policy treated all centres as the same when they were not the same, Ms Blackwood said.

'It offers the same rates to centres whose costs differ hugely. For example land that costs tens of thousands of dollars in some rural areas can cost a million dollars in some urban centres. Staff costs vary substantially depending on location. And we offer entirely different sorts of service, the costs of which vary dramatically.

'The result is that low-cost centres can afford to offer 20 free, but most centres cannot. And as a result of this 20 free presents the majority of centres with a nasty little dilemma: provide 20 free to the families we serve, but cut staff and/or children's programmes in order to be able to afford to do so; or defend quality, but refuse to provide families with a benefit of up to $92 a week per child.'

The perverse incentive was for centres to cut teachers and children's programmes in order to be able to afford to opt in, she said.

Consequently, if the policy went ahead, teachers would be laid off, education programmes cut, and almost two decades of progress under the Before 5 Reforms would be reversed.

Ms Blackwood said the Government's solution to this problem was 'optional charges'.

ENDS

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