The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has begun a review of the State’s early childhood education and care sector in a bid to improve affordability, accessibility and consumer choice.
Chair of IPART, Carmel Donnelly said the Tribunal was calling for feedback on access and affordability in the sector through its issues paper Review of early childhood education and care.
Ms Donnelly said that high quality early childhood education and care were critical issues for NSW families, closely linked to better long-term educational outcomes for children and increased workforce participation for women.
“We want to help ensure improved affordability, accessibility and consumer choice as a result of NSW State Government investment,” Ms Donnelly said.
“Access to early childhood education and care is currently unaffordable for a large number of NSW families, and we’ll be looking at ways to turn this around,” she said.
“We’ll be estimating ‘benchmark’ prices that can be used to measure and compare fees in NSW.”
Ms Donnelly said IPART would look at improvements that could be made through State Government initiatives and funding.
She said the Tribunal wanted to hear from the community, including families, providers and workers in the sector, about their experience and concerns.
“This input will help us formulate a broad set of recommendations to the NSW Government to ensure better outcomes for families and children.”
Ms Donnelly said there would be further opportunities to provide feedback throughout the review with online public hearings to be held on 15 and 16 May this year.
She said IPART would publish an interim report in August and come to its final recommendations in December this year.
IPART’s 36-page Issues Paper can be accessed at this PS News link.
