We welcome feedback on our draft findings and draft recommendations about 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. 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)
• outside of school hours care (before and after school care and vacation care) (for school children up to 12 years of age).

We have released an Interim Report with draft findings about factors that drive affordability, accessibility, consumer choice and supply of early childhood services, as well as draft recommendations to improve affordability and accessibility. We’ve also published a short Overview summarising our draft findings and recommendations.

Tell us what you think

IPART welcomes feedback from the community, including families from all backgrounds across NSW, as well as providers and workers in the sector, advocacy groups and sector representatives. This will help us make final recommendations to the NSW Government to help ensure better outcomes for families and children.

You can respond until 17 November 2023 by:

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

We will also hold an online public hearing on 30 October 2023, which will provide another opportunity to provide feedback. IPART will make final recommendations in December this year.

We may publish the results from the survey or quick poll. We may also anonymously publish survey free text responses and stories in line with IPART’s Submissions Policy.

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.

Thank you for your feedback

This engagement is now closed. Thank you for participating. We are currently reviewing your feedback.

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.

Complete a survey

CLOSED: This survey has concluded.

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