23 April 2025
Ahead of the federal election on 3 May 2025, the Early Learning and Care Council of Australia (ELACCA) is calling on all parties and candidates to commit to action and investment that will underpin a high-quality, inclusive early learning and care sector, and set Australian children up for the best possible start in life.
ELACCA endorses the recommendations provided by the Productivity Commission (PC) in its 2024 inquiry report, A path to universal early childhood education and care.
Importantly, the PC’s recommended reform pathway prioritises quality, access, affordability and inclusion for the children and families who are the most likely to benefit from high-quality early learning and care but are the most likely to be missing out.
Child safety
ELACCA is deeply committed to high-quality early learning and care for all children, regardless of where they live, or their family circumstances. There is nothing more important than the safety and well-being of children, and it is at the heart of our sector.
ELACCA supports reform and investment focussed on strengthening the provision of high-quality early learning and care, in the following areas:
- Ensuring a strong reporting culture to increase safety
- Establishing national consistency across jurisdictions to ensure child safety
- Building the capacity of our workforce.
Priority action ELACCA would like to see includes:
- Renegotiate, update or redesign the National Partnership Agreement on the Quality Agenda for Early Childhood Education and Care.
- Implement a National Working with Vulnerable People Check
- Fund a national research project into reporting behaviour, to examine and recommend improvements to ensuring time-critical reporting of breaches, incidents and complaints.
- Develop and implement a national reportable conduct scheme
- Provide professional learning for educators to build sector capacity and capability in acceptable and appropriate reporting practice that ensures child safeguarding.
- Fully embed contextual safeguarding principles, child safe culture and the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations into the National Quality Standard.
- Fund state and territory regulators to deliver targeted and timely assessment and rating of services under the NQF, with a renewed focus on building capability.
- Introduce nationally consistent publication and reporting on enforcement actions by ACECQA.
- Implement strong and nationally consistent requirements for approved providers and persons with management and control to demonstrate capability, compliance and integrity in the provision and/or expansion of ECEC services.
Inclusion
There is an urgent need for targeted, ongoing federal funding to improve inclusion and the Inclusion Support Program (ISP), by implementing the inclusion recommendations from the PC report, and working closely with the sector. The sector requires fully funded, demand-driven inclusion support to meet the needs of children and families while providing our educators with essential knowledge and support.
Effective and adequately funded inclusion support has been a significant issue for families and children requiring additional support, and for early learning and care services seeking to meet their needs. Access to inclusion support should be seamless and accessible for every family, and not be determined by postcode, family background or capacity to navigate the system.
Priority action ELACCA would like to see includes:
- Increase the hourly rate for additional educators under the ISP, and index annually to reflect the different skillset and qualification level of additional educators.
- Remove the cap on weekly hours under the ISP to enable support to meet demand.
- Backdate payments to services under the ISP to the date the claim is lodged.
- Introduce a needs-based Inclusion Fund for educators and teachers to access training and development plus the necessary resources.
Accessibility
Encouraging and enabling all children to participate in early learning is an important priority for all governments in Australia, with substantial long-term benefits for the whole country. We urge all parties and candidates in the upcoming election to recognise the particular importance of access to high-quality early learning and care to vulnerable and disadvantaged cohorts of children and families who continue to face barriers to participating in the system.
A consistent recommendation across recent inquiries, and advocacy focus for the sector, has been to remove or amend the Child Care Subsidy (CCS) activity test. The CCS activity test is currently a barrier for many families, resulting in the very children that benefit from high quality learning and care the most – children experiencing disadvantage or vulnerability – being the least able to access it.
We welcome improvements to access to early learning and care, especially for children and families who have the most to gain. Softening the Child Care Subsidy activity test, as provided in the Three-Day Guarantee legislation, will remove barriers to access for thousands of families when it comes into effect in January 2026. Under this reform, more than 100,000 families will be entitled to more hours of subsidised care.
Preliminary insights from ELACCA, using member data from services across the country, and extrapolating to the broader sector, indicates that there is, on average, capacity to respond to this demand in all jurisdictions. Noting location specific and age group variability, ELACCA estimates over 360,000 additional children could be supported to attend 3 days per week.
Workforce
The single biggest contributor to high quality in early childhood education and care services is the education and training of early childhood educators and teachers. A skilled, knowledgeable, and stable workforce is essential for supporting children’s safety and wellbeing, learning and development.
We value the skills and dedication of our workforce and we welcome recent federal government investment in their wages via the Worker Retention Payment (WRP). We will continue to advocate for greater, ongoing government investment in our workforce to attract and retain skilled and quality early childhood professionals. Appropriate remuneration for our sector equates to pay parity for early childhood teachers with primary school teachers, and early childhood educators with primary school support staff.
Priority action ELACCA would like to see includes:
- Provide funding to improve wages and conditions beyond current 2-year WRP grant.
- Ensure pay parity with school-based staff, and government funding that meets the pay rise determined by the Fair Work Commission in its gender-based undervaluation case.
- Provide coordinated government investment to promote and support career pathways to provide progression for early career early childhood professionals and retain experienced practitioners and leaders in the sector.
- Ensure quality in training and credentials with industry-university partnerships to inform qualifications designed to equip early childhood professionals and teachers to succeed and stay in the sector.
- Implement a recruitment campaign (for example, ELACCA’s Big Roles in Little Lives) to attract and attract-back a workforce to a fulfilling and rewarding career.
Affordability
Cost of living pressures are impacting Australian families as a result of global inflation. It is important that cost is not a barrier to families accessing quality early learning and care.
ELACCA supports the changes to affordability recommended by the PC. The additional investment proposed by the PC, including changes to the taper, will result in early learning being more affordable for all families, and free for lower-income families, ensuring those who have the most to gain do not miss out.
The package of reforms provided in the PC’s final report prioritise quality, inclusion, supply of places and affordability, which sit at the heart of the early learning and care system. Affordability is important, but it cannot be at the expense of, and must be considered in the context of, access to high-quality, inclusive and available early learning and care – otherwise we may do more harm than good, in the years that matter most.
Priority action ELACCA would like to see includes:
- Affordability of early learning and care improved for all eligible families, by implementing the PC’s preferred option of reforms to the Child Care Subsidy (CCS), including adjustments to the taper, and free for lower-income families.
- Work closely with the sector in considering any future funding reform to ensure it is well-informed and ensures supply and provision of high-quality early learning and care.
We look forward to working together to ensure that every child, regardless of where they live or the type of service they attend, has access to safe, high-quality early learning and care.
Please contact ELACCA at: [email protected] for a copy of our election platform, or to discuss our priorities for action and investment.
Early Learning and Care Council of Australia
PO Box 348
Annandale NSW 2038
About us:
The Early Learning and Care Council of Australia (ELACCA) was established to promote the value of quality early learning and care as an integral part of Australia’s education system. Our 18 CEO members include some of the largest early learning providers in the country, representing both not-for-profit and for-profit services. ELACCA members operate 1,980 long day care services, 316 preschool/kindergarten services and 83 OSHC services, covering every state and territory. They offer one-quarter of all the early learning places in Australia. Together, our members serve 360,870 children and their families, and employ more than 58,000 staff.
As well as promoting the value of quality early learning and the need for greater public investment, ELACCA advocates for the right of all children to access quality early learning and care, particularly children facing disadvantage. We do this by drawing on the knowledge and practical experience of our members and representing their views to decision makers in government, the media and the public.
