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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-02 Daily Xml
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Universal Three-Year-Old Preschool

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:34): My question is to the Minister for Education.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Florey will come to order. I can't hear the member for MacKillop.

Mr McBRIDE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister for Education. Can the minister please inform the house what investments have been announced into the rollout of early learning in the state? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Around the state, the new early learning for three and four year olds needs greater infrastructure for the new acceptance of these enrolments around classrooms, teachers, toilets and bathrooms and the like. In MacKillop, we are no different. We need these investments. I would be interested to know what is happening in this space.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (14:35): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and for his interest in the delivery of three-year-old preschool, which of course, as many people, I hope, in this place know, will start from the start of 2026. To give a little bit of context to the member for MacKillop's question around how many places will be offered in what is the first year of our rollout, the good news for members in this place, particularly those in regional parts of our state, is that we will be offering a place for three-year-old preschool for as many as 6,000 three year olds in South Australia next year.

To put that in context, that is about a third of all three year olds in South Australia at any given time and about 2,000 more than we had anticipated originally being able to offer in the first year of the rollout. I am sure that is good news for the member for MacKillop. Having said that, of course, the point that he makes around the need for investment is a fair one, and we know that. That is why we started this process with a royal commission.

We started with a royal commission that of course was headed up by the Hon. Julia Gillard AC, which delivered some very, very important recommendations about how we would roll three-year-old preschool out, how it needs to be resourced and how those long day care centres and preschools and early learning centres that are partnering with us to make sure we can offer it to 6,000 three year olds for next year will have the infrastructure, the professional development and the staff they need to actually do it.

Of course, the headline figure in terms of what we are committing as a government to the provision of three-year-old preschool I think is something like $1.9 billion across the life of the rollout, but just recently I was in regional South Australia also announcing other money that would be going towards those centres that are participating. It includes, for government preschools that are part of it, a $10,000 increase in their funding, a one-off to help them make sure they have everything in place to start offering three-year-old preschool from next year.

I also announced a larger bucket of money, from memory about $2.8 million, from which infrastructure grants can be sourced for those sites that might currently have a lot of four year olds but not have three year olds and in that transition need to update or upgrade their facilities to be able to accommodate younger children who might, for instance, need more nappy-changing facilities than the four year olds.

I can reassure the member for MacKillop that these are all things that we have taken into account, but I am very happy to sit down and talk about individual sites in his seat that might need extra support. We know that this is a big change. This is the biggest structural change that we have made to our education system in this state since four-year-old preschool was introduced. It is a big undertaking, but I want to reassure the member for MacKillop and other members that we are watching very closely as we edge closer and closer towards the start of rollout in January.

We will be supporting sites to make sure they have everything in place in terms of the staff they need, the infrastructure they need and the professional development they need, to make sure they can offer a really high-quality offering of teacher-led play-based learning for 15 hours for three year olds in South Australia from next year.

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