In my job as CEO of The Parenthood I’m often invited to speak on TV about topics affecting the parents and carers in our community. Often, it’s about paid parental leave or being able to afford and access quality early learning and care, or finding a job in which it’s possible to work and raise a family.
And so it was, a few weeks back, that I found myself, ahead of a segment on The Today Show, sitting in a make-up chair while two wizards set about weaving their magic.
Mon, aka the Hair Wizard, asked what I was going to talk about.
‘A new report that proposes every child in Australia should be entitled to access at least 3 days a week of quality early learning for either no cost or $10 a day,’ I explained.
She stopped and stared. “Oh…wow.” she paused. “That would be … life changing.”
When Ellie, aka the Make-up Wizard, came over we had a near word-for-word version of the same exchange. She doesn’t have children but her sister does. She said the cost of daycare is crushing them.
After the segment was filmed one of the men on set came up. “My wife and I have 3 kids and this would be …”, he paused. “..life changing”.
Before 7.30am on a random Wednesday morning I had encountered about 8 people and three of them had separately used the phrase “life-changing”.
And they’re not wrong. If Australia was to adopt the proposal in the Centre for Policy Development’s report, Growing Together, it would change lives – of children and parents as well as families and communities. And these changes wouldn’t be fleeting.
You can change the trajectory of a child’s life by getting the zero-to-five window right. This is because the brain development that occurs between the age of 0 and 5 is profound.
This is why a child having access to high quality, inclusive early childhood education and care, delivered by professionally paid and supported educators, can improve the health, social, educational and economic outcomes that child can enjoy over their lifetime. Children who have the opportunity to attend quality early childhood education and care before they start school are far more likely to arrive at school ready to learn. That is in itself life-changing.
It’s also nation-changing on account of children being the future; there is no person in this country who won’t benefit from all children being supported to realise their potential.
But that’s not even the life-changing part my straw poll on Wednesday referred to. They were talking about lives being changed via parents having the simplicity and certainty of access to high quality early education and care for a low-set fee.
For families around Australia lucky enough to be able to access a position, the cost of daycare is prohibitively high. It creates what we, at The Parenthood, describe as the “cost of working crisis”.
A national poll of 1200 parents with children under six last year showed that more than 80% agree you need two incomes to meet the cost of living. But, with out of pocket costs for daycare upwards of $100 a day, some families cannot “afford” to work and earn a second income.
For families who can ‘afford’ to continue to work, the financial stress from the cost of care for their children – akin to a second mortgage – is crippling.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t sums it up. It is certainly why so many mums in Australia work part-time after having children: it’s not so much “choice” as “no choice at all”.
Every child being entitled to access at least 3 days a week of quality early learning for a low set fee, say $10 a day, would radically change the “choices” families are able to make.
It would also change the choices parents-to-be make. We recently did a quick a survey of parents and parents to be, and almost 60 per cent of respondents identified “the cost of daycare” as a main barrier to growing their family.
It’s then not surprising that the new national Early Learning Monitor, out today, which polls 4,500 Australians, shows two in three Australians support early learning being capped at $10 a day. It’s also not surprising that among parents of pre-school aged children, 8 out of 10 say the cost of living is an extremely or very important issue to them. Among this group improving early childhood education and care is the third most important political issue, just following reducing the cost of living and improving the health system.
At the end of last month the Commonwealth Government was handed a report from the Productivity Commission looking at what shape a universal early childhood education and care system might take. It is expected to be shared publicly at some point soon.
This report was the result of a commitment Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made in October 2020 as the Opposition Leader. At the time, he said that if he were to become Prime Minister, making quality, affordable early childhood education and care universal is a legacy he’d like his government to leave. He described it accurately as economic and social reform.
It’s a commitment he has maintained. On the day the Centre for Policy Development’s $10 a day report was released the Prime Minister responded to it directly. He noted it would “help with productivity” and said that “universal early childhood education is desirable and possible”.
Life-changing is another way to describe it. As is vote-changing, according to the latest Early Learning Monitor.
Georgie Dent is the CEO of The Parenthood, a leading NFP advocacy organisation representing 80,000 parents, carers and supporters nationally.