There’s a curious twist to Australia’s education system: the youngest participants are the most exposed to market forces.
While for-profit education is rare from kindergarten to university, for most under-5s it’s laissez-faire; almost 70 per cent of Australia’s daycare centres are run for a profit.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed improvements to childcare reform as an economic reform.Credit: AAP
This free-market experiment in early childhood care and education was decades in the making. In the early 1970s the Whitlam government began funding not-for-profit providers to expand the supply of childcare, especially for disadvantaged children.
But as women’s workforce participation steadily grew during the 1980s and 1990s, the focus shifted to subsidising parents with fee relief; in 1990 the Hawke Labor government extended government support to parents using for-profit childcare, attracting greater business involvement in the sector. Several Howard government policies, especially a taxpayer-funded childcare rebate introduced in 2004, also helped pave the way for the current corporatised childcare sector, underpinned by a growing pile of Commonwealth cash.
Childcare is now big business, with several large providers listed on the stock exchange and childcare facilities an attractive asset class for commercial property investors.
By 2021-22, federal childcare subsidies had reached $10.3 billion, nearly as much as the Victorian government spent running its whole public school system that year ($11.2 billion, according to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority).
Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:
Anthony Albanese made cheaper childcare a central plank of Labor’s pitch to voters at the 2022 federal election, with a promise to pour an extra $5.4 billion into the system. Albanese framed improvements to childcare as a “fundamental” economic reform that would boost female workforce participation.
This year childcare subsidies are forecast to cost the Commonwealth $13 billion, rising to $15 billion by 2026-27. On current trends it won’t be long before federal spending on childcare outstrips recurrent expenditure on the giant NSW public school system (about $17 billion in 2022-23).
Costly childcare’s a slippery slope. So why haven’t we learnt?
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09.04.2024
There’s a curious twist to Australia’s education system: the youngest participants are the most exposed to market forces.
While for-profit education is rare from kindergarten to university, for most under-5s it’s laissez-faire; almost 70 per cent of Australia’s daycare centres are run for a profit.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese framed improvements to childcare reform as an economic reform.Credit: AAP
This free-market experiment in early childhood care and education was decades in the making. In the early 1970s the Whitlam government began........
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