Early childhood education and care review
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.
Tell us your story
We want to hear your experiences of early childhood education and care and invite you to add your story below.
We want families to tell us about their experiences of using early childhood services. We are keen to hear from families who plan to or currently use these services, families who have used them in the past, and families who have been unable to use these services. We also want to know about how families feel about the accessibility, availability, affordability, and choice of early childhood services in their local areas.
We want early childhood service providers and people who work in these services to tell us about their experiences of operating and working in these services in NSW and the challenges that they face. We are keen to hear from service providers operating (or who have operated) early childhood services in NSW and people who work (or who have worked) in early childhood services in NSW. We also want to know about how these experiences and challenges might have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can also add your thoughts by mapping your experience or completing the survey to have your say.
If you are submitting an image with your story, please note that we are unable to publish stories that include images of children.
In the interest of privacy, we ask you not to name any specific early childhood services or individuals when sharing your feedback or attach images of children to your submission.
