South Australian Royal Commission calls for shake up in ECEC roles and responsibilities

It is wonderful to see the South Australian Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Final Report has been released, and has a strong focus on reducing vulnerability and lifting access and quality.

This report signals an ambitious agenda for South Australia with the aim of reducing developmental vulnerability from 23.8 per cent to 15 per cent over 20 years.

The Commission had a wide remit, including looking at the first 1,000 days, how quality three- and four-year-old preschool can be introduced and, unlike other reviews to date, how families can have access to out-of-school hours care both for preschool and school-aged children.

The report calls for a new national settlement of roles and responsibilities in ECEC, with states and territories to be responsible for quality assurance and connecting families to the system, and the Commonwealth having primary responsibility for ensuring affordability across all service types including providing inclusion support. As part of this there would be clear performance indicators to match supply with demand.

The report has a focus on ensuring access to out-of-school-hours care (OSHC), delivered by a third party, with a range of recommendations focused on ways to deliver viable, sustainable services that meet the needs of their communities.

The report argues for the Commonwealth Government to introduce three days of eligibility for Child Care Subsidy (CCS) for all children regardless of parental activity, needs-based funding, and funding linked to children’s ages to more closely match the costs of delivery for children under three. It also argues for CCS for OSHC for preschool settings to increase flexibility for families.

The introduction of three-year-old preschool is welcomed, with additional places to be commissioned for vulnerable children and workforce support including professional learning, a workforce fund and release time for early childhood educators. The South Australian Government is looking to innovate in this space, but will also be able to borrow from initiatives in jurisdictions such as Victoria.

The report looks to reduce disadvantage and vulnerability by providing additional support to children who will most benefit, from additional hours of preschool for children who are the most vulnerable to introducing more highly funded alternative learning models for communities with current low levels of preschool enrolment. This is an interesting approach in deviating from a one size fits all preschool model and trialling what might work in different communities, wrapping research around this to build an evidence base. Priorities also include funding to develop referral pathways and outreach for children at risk.

Improvements in research and data are at the core of a new system with a new Office for the Early Years to establish and maintain a new data system to enable data sharing and learning across the system and to lift quality. The report references the need for research on issues such as longer versus shorter preschool days, groupings of children and whether consecutive days yield better outcomes. This is exciting – lots of anecdotal data exists but to date there’s been little conclusive evidence about what delivers the best learning outcomes for which children.

The report is released at a pivotal time, with the ACCC and PC reports are still being formulated and likely to shape a future Commonwealth Government agenda. ECEC policy and funding is complicated, and made more so by the split between Commonwealth and States. It will be interesting to see if this report provides the nudge needed for an easier to navigate system through a more rational carving up of responsibilities.

Megan O’Connell OAM GAICD is the Director of Megan O’Connell Consulting.