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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-04 Daily Xml
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Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:27): My question is to the Minister for Education. Does the government support universal availability to public preschools for all South Australian families? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The interim royal commission report suggests that 70 per cent of three year olds will not access their new preschool entitlements through public sites, but that will only be limited as an option to those who are not currently in long day care.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:27): I thank the member for Morialta for his very important question. The member refers to the royal commission's interim report, and it is important, of course, for us all to remember in this place that it is an interim report.

As the Premier said, we think it is a fantastic piece of work. It does an exceptional job of making what is a very complicated area of public policy, which does have interactions from different levels of government, easy to understand. I think that is important for a number of reasons, but particularly because it has been so opaque for so long that it has avoided any real kind of public scrutiny because it has been so difficult to actually understand how it works. I want to take the opportunity that the member for Morialta's question affords me in this place to thank the royal commissioner for her wonderful piece of work.

If I could address the nub of the question from the member for Morialta around one of the interim recommendations, which is a mixed model of delivery and which would see a large portion of three-year-old preschool delivered in long day care, or at least non-government sites, and a comparatively smaller portion of three-year-old preschool delivered in the existing government preschool system where we offer four-year-old preschool now; and, of course, we would need to expand that as well.

I think that the point that the member for Morialta is getting at here is: does this government support the option for all South Australian families? We are sure that it will be a very, very high take-up of three-year-old preschool. In fact, I think that the royal commissioner provides in her interim report one of the reasons why she recommends the mixed model of delivery.

There are two main things. One is that, I think, off the top of my head, the royal commissioner believes that we can get to as high as 97 per cent of three year olds accessing three-year-old preschool under a mixed model of delivery, which would see a lot of it delivered in long day care. The workforce challenges, although they are still considerable under that model—I think 660 early childhood teachers, 880 educators and 120 directors to achieve that—are still far more achievable than a model where all three-year-old preschool is delivered through the existing government system.

The member for Morialta's question is: do we support choice for South Australian families to choose the public system, instead of receiving it where they might be receiving their existing long day care provision? My answer is—because I asked the royal commissioner this question myself after we received the interim report—there is no recommendation in the interim report that says that we will be stopping families from seeking to access their three-year-old preschool at a government site.

I think one of the interim recommendations strongly suggests that we should be prioritising those families who are not currently receiving that offering in government sites. That is something that we would support, but we would not be preventing families seeking to access their three-year-old preschool component in government preschool sites. Of course, the question then becomes around capacity, and there are a number of things that we can do around that.

One of the ideas floated by the royal commissioner around how we might be able to create additional capacity in the government system, separate to building more preschools and employing more staff of our own, is to look at whether or not the 15 hours that are offered for four year olds currently could be delivered over two days instead of often 2½ days. Of course, that would then provide more space and more capacity in the existing system that we could then offer to three year olds. There are things we will look at because I am of course a proud supporter of the public system and I do want to make sure that we maintain the opportunity for families to have that option.

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