Preschool fees down
The NSW Government is cutting preschool fees by an average of 30% to encourage more parents to enrol their children in early childhood education.
Fees will be reduced to an average $22 per day where a child is enrolled to attend a minimum 15 hours per week.
Starting from 1 January 2017, community preschools across the state who enrol four and five year old children for at least 600 hours in the year before school will receive increased subsidies from the NSW Government.
However, the cost of childcare to the bulk of NSW families could actually increase, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
That’s because of the $115 million announced by Premier Mike Baird, just $30 million is earmarked for long day care centres - where the bulk of NSW children go – and the rest is for preschools, and targeted at disadvantaged children.
While welcoming the targeting of the additional funds to disadvantaged kids, long day care providers argue the money overlooks the majority of working families, who access long day care.
$246m funds missing
Early childhood education operators in NSW will be drip fed funding instead of receiving the full amount of Commonwealth and State funding that has been hidden away by the Baird Government, the Opposition said.
The Government’s $115 million funding commitment for the next 18 months is just one third of the funding that has been withheld from NSW preschools.
Over the past five years the NSW Government has underspent the preschool budget by $365.6 million. In a recent report the Auditor General found that the Government grossly underspent on the Commonwealth funding provided for NSW preschools by $227 million since 2011 to 2015.
Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education Kate Washington MP said: “Early childhood education providers who have been starved of funding for years are disgusted by the amount of Commonwealth funding that has been hoarded away by the Baird Government”.
“It’s disgraceful that Premier Mike Baird wants to pat himself on the back for this weak funding commitment after all of the damage his government has done to preschool accessibility and affordability in NSW.”
C&K members’ entitlements at risk
Crèche and Kindergarten Association (C&K) has refused to accept the recent wage outcomes for teachers in the Queensland state and Catholic school sectors as a benchmark for C&K teachers.
In ongoing negotiations for a new collective agreement, our Union has tabled positions that would maintain the wage nexus C&K teachers have long-held with state school teachers.
IEUA-QNT Senior Industrial Officer John Spriggs said the employer’s refusal to acknowledge and meet this wage benchmark threatens the professional recognition of early childhood teachers.
C&K has also identified issues which would significantly reduce employees’ entitlements to superannuation, redundancy and vacation times.
C&K have requested that the ‘co-contribution’ scheme toward superannuation be closed to all new and current employees who do not currently make such a contribution.
Our Union has previously had discussions with C&K on behalf of employees identifying issues for negotiations, including the retention of existing conditions, reassessment of workload for directors and expectations regarding vacation time.
“Employees should not be expected to use vacation periods as a time to perform work which cannot realistically or reasonably be scheduled during term time,” Mr Spriggs said.
The call to address workloads came after our Union’s survey of C&K members revealed that three quarters of staff work three or more unpaid hours each week.
The employee ‘issues for negotiation’ paper, which was tabled at a July meeting, proposed additional release time or remuneration for directors and a review of assistant paid hours to ensure employees are able to complete their duties in paid time.
Services improve rating
The latest Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) NQF Snapshot includes, for the first time, data regarding re-assessed services.
Nearly five years on since the implementation of the National Quality Framework (NQF) and National Quality Standards (NQS) for early childhood education, services are beginning to receive their second assessment visits from ACECQA.
The latest report shows 67% of re-assessed services received a higher overall quality rating.
Of the services which did not receive a higher overall quality rating, 64% did improve performance against elements of the NQS. Just 1% of services recorded a lower overall quality rating at re-assessment.
The latest Snapshot data shows that the majority of all assessed services (69%) are meeting or exceeding the NQS.
Services are rated on a five point scale which, from lowest to highest, includes: significant improvement required, working towards NQS, meeting NQS, exceeding NQS and excellent.
Read the complete NQF Snapshot at www.acecqa.gov.au