We want feedback on affordability, accessibility, and consumer choice in early childhood education and care.

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) is reviewing the NSW early childhood education and care sector to look at improvements that could be made to affordability, accessibility, and consumer choice.

Early childhood services include:

• long day care, family day care and occasional care (for children aged 0-5 years)
• NSW Department of Education preschool, community and mobile preschool (for children aged 3-5 years, focusing on the year before school)
• out of school hours care (before and after school care and vacation care) (for school children up to 12 years of age).

As part of the review, IPART will also estimate ‘benchmark’ prices to measure and compare fees in NSW.

IPART has released an Issues Paper seeking your feedback on experiences of access and affordability in the sector, which is currently used by more than 300,000 families in NSW. IPART has also published a short Overview summarising key issues and questions in the Issues Paper.

IPART would like to hear from the community, including families from all backgrounds across NSW, as well as providers and workers in the sector, advocacy groups and sector representatives about their experience and concerns.

High quality early childhood education and care is a critical issue for NSW families closely linked to better long-term educational outcomes for children and increased workforce participation for women.

Tell us what you think

IPART is seeking your feedback on the Overview, Issues Paper and affordability, accessibility, and consumer choice in the sector. This will help IPART make recommendations to the NSW Government to help ensure better outcomes for families and children.

You can respond until 22 May 2023 by:

• doing our survey and/or taking our quick poll
• mapping your experiences
• telling us your story, or
• making a submission.

There will be further opportunities to provide feedback throughout the review. IPART will also hold online public hearings on 15 and 16 May 2023 and publish an Interim Report in October 2023.

IPART will make final recommendations in December this year.

IPART’s review is focused on the NSW experience - there are also 2 national inquiries under way into early childhood education and care by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Productivity Commission.

To register for IPART’s upcoming public hearings, or for more information on this review, please see IPART’s website.

Thank you for your feedback

This engagement is now closed. Thank you for participating and sharing your thoughts and ideas. We are currently reviewing your feedback. Submissions received in response to the Issues Paper and an Information Paper on the results of this consultation have been published on IPART's website.

Access to high-quality early childhood education and care is a critical issue for NSW families. It is closely linked to better long-term educational outcomes for children and increased workforce participation for parents, especially women.

IPART was asked to review NSW early childhood education and care affordability, accessibility and consumer choice, including for community and mobile preschool, family day care, long day care, NSW Department of Education preschool, occasional care, and outside school hours care.

We have completed our review and submitted our Final Report to the Premier and Minister for Education and Early Learning on 19 December 2023.

Our Final Report builds on our Interim Report which was published in October 2023. It incorporates stakeholder feedback on our draft recommendations and sets out our analysis, findings and recommendations to the NSW Government for each of the tasks set out in our Terms of Reference including to:

• review the market and report on factors driving accessibility, consumer choice, affordability and supply of services
• collect cost and revenue data on current fees, household out-of-pocket costs, and provider revenue and costs
• estimate benchmark prices that reflect the costs of providing quality services and to compare service fees
• recommend ways to improve affordability, accessibility and consumer choice.

For more information on this review, please see IPART's website.

Early childhood education and care review survey

The survey period has closed. Thank you for your input.

Submissions have now closed. Please visit IPART’s website for updates.