Y Kinders excited to be part of 2025 free Kinder roll out in Victoria

Ararat Rural City will be amongst the first local government areas (LGAs) to roll out 30 hours of fully funded, free kindergarten for four-year-old children as part of the Best Start, Best Life early childhood education reform commencing in 2025. 

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) provider Y Kinders has welcomed the announcement, saying they are excited to have been chosen to be a part of the cutting edge changes. 

Y Kinders is the largest early years management providers in Victoria with a current portfolio of 93 kindergartens across the state. These include services in regional and rural Victoria,  where there may be only one service available to the community, through to larger centres in Metropolitan Melbourne.  

“To see services in Ararat again having the opportunity to lead the way with this reform is fantastic,” said Craig Mathieson, Chief Executive Officer for Y Ballarat. “Ararat was one of the first regions to provide 15 hours of funded kindergarten for three- year-old children, and that work has clearly been recognised.” 

“The offering of 30-hours of four-year-older kindergarten will further ensure that all children receive the best possible start to their education journey, in a model that supports families with kinder and school drop-off while requiring less additional care,” he added. 

The expansion of the Best Start, Best Life program announced on 16 June 2022 will see three major new initiatives: 

• Making kinder free across the state 
• Delivering a new year of universal Pre-Prep for four-year-olds, rolling out from 2025 
• Establishing 50 government operated childcare centres.

Y Ballarat Executive Manager Children’s Services explained that there will be some changes in how Y Kinder services will operate in order to meet the new requirements. 

“We will be talking with members of our communities, our service delivery partners and our teaching teams as we prepare to deliver on this commitment. We’re very mindful that it’s not  just a matter of opening the doors more often – we need to find the right fit for our Communities,” she said.

Ms Dobson was candid about the need to ensure that sufficient workforce capacity was available to meet the increased demand as a result of the changes saying “there’s no doubt over the last few years that our sector has  been hit hard by the broader impacts of COVID-19.”

“We are working hard, like many other organisations in this sector, to ensure we highlight just how rewarding a career in early childhood education can be, with opportunities for career progression and to work across a variety of our centres state-wide.” 

More information about the roll out of Pre-Prep can be found here.