The Bum-Wiping Boondoggle of ‘Early Education’

The NDIS is a public policy albatross, initiated with the worthiest of intentions it has been allowed to mutate into a massive boondoggle, one right up there with Australia becoming a ‘renewable energy superpower’.  The NDIS cost us somewhere the region of $42 billion in the current financial year and is expected to blow out even further.

But there is another boondoggle, not quite as expensive as the NDIS, but just as egregious in the extent to which it has been corrupted by rent-seekers and bureaucrats. Unlike the NDIS, this one has been flying under the radar.  I am referring to the child-care industry.

This one ‘only’ will cost us $12.7 billion this financial year, but that is a not inconsiderable drain on our public purse.  And like the NDIS, its cost is blowing out year by year.  In 2019/20 it reportedly cost $8.6 billion.  That is a jump of 50 per cent in three years.

In his 2023/24 budget, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has allocated expenditure of $98.6 million over the next four years to strengthen compliance measures.  This is expected to achieve ‘savings’ of $411 million over that period.    On current tends this will be savings against an expenditure of at least $54 billion, assuming no further growth – a heroic assumption.  That roughly equates to as much as one quarter of what we spend defending this country.

On current tends this will be savings against an expenditure of at least $54 billion, assuming no further growth – a heroic assumption.

But wait, there’s more, as SBS recently reported:

In March, childcare reform campaign Thrive by Five spearheaded the proposal for childcare fees to be slashed to $10 a day, under a plan to make it a “universal right”.

Think tank the Centre for Policy Development has built on political momentum to move towards a universal childcare system, charting a path to get there in 10 years.

Making all young children entitled to at least three days a week of free child care or at a low set fee, such as $10 a day, was a key recommendation of the Centre for Policy Development report and follows a Productivity Commission paper calling for a similar policy.

Those experiencing disadvantage should be entitled to more, the think thank recommended, such as five days a week of free care.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese welcomed the “important contribution” to the debate and said Labor went to the 2022 federal election with the ambition of delivering universal child care.

“Universal child care provision, as it is in a range of other countries, is something that is a valued national asset,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Where there is little or no cost, attendance tends to be high.  Well, fancy that! This looks set to put the NDIS in the shade.

Here is how it works now – and that’s problematic enough.   The government provides a subsidy to parents whose kids are in child-care centres – what are often called early education centres.   The subsidy is paid to the service provider, not the parents. It is based on the hourly rate charged by the centre, which is capped at, for the purposes of this discussion, $13.  Families on annual combined income of up to $80,000 get 90%.  Those on incomes between $80,000 and $530,000 are on a sliding scale that reduces by 1% for every additional $5,000 of income.  You might wonder why a family on $500,000, but young enough to have pre-school age kids, would need this subsidy, however miniscule.  They are not exactly on Struggle Street.

Chalmers would have been assisted in his deliberations on this matter by Early Childhood Minister, Dr Anne Aly, who also doubles as Minister for Youth.  Your guess is as good as mine as to why we should need a minister for either of these.  God knows what ‘Youth’ means.  And as far as ‘early childhood education’ is concerned, this seems something of an overkill.

And as far as ‘early childhood education’ is concerned, this seems something of an overkill.

The problem with this industry is that it represents schizophrenic public policy. On one hand it is intended to help with the costs of pre-school child minding.  But, in its Mr Hyde incarnation, it promotes the dubious concept of ‘early childhood learning’ or, as I prefer to think of it, ‘early childhood indoctrination’.

Let me address the child-minding aspect first.  This used to be a sustainable cottage industry. When my kids were growing up there was a very nice lady who lived in our town.  Her name was Ruth.  Her husband, Bob, was an accountant but he could not work because he suffered from Parkinsons.  Ruth and Bob got by looking after children in their home and backyard.  They looked after the kids well, and the kids enjoyed themselves.  They didn’t charge much, but they had a good customer base and it allowed them to maintain a reasonable lifestyle.  Sadly, Ruth would not be able to operate today.

Now to Mr Hyde.  ‘Early childhood learning’ is touted as essential for later development. From the Department of Education website:

Early childhood education and care instils social, physical, emotional, personal, creative, and cognitive learning in children. It’s delivered by qualified educators through a formalised learning framework.

Quality early education and care early leads to better health, education and employment outcomes later in life. Quality education and care lays the foundation for lifelong development and learning. Additionally, children who attend preschool are generally better prepared to start primary school.

There appears to be various curricula available to these centres but one example, from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, is a child-centred curriculum which:

offers children the opportunity to make choices about what, how and whom they want to play. This approach enables children to initiate and direct their own play with the support of interested and responsive adults.

Sounds rather like what Ruth and Bob used to do. This prompts a number of questions:

♦ If early education is so important to future development, then why should not stay-at-home mums be required to send their kids to pre-school?  Are they neglecting their kids by failing to do so?

♦ If early education is so effective, then why are academic standards falling in K-12?

♦ How many working mums would rate early learning higher above safe and supportive child-minding?

♦ How many of these working mums in, say, Canberra are now working from home most, or even all, of the time? Absent the ‘early learning’ aspect, how hard would it be for them to keep an eye on the kids, spending, say, 15 minutes every hour with them?

♦ Many parents who have kids at school, and who want a better education for their kids than the government system provides, bite the bullet and pay extra to send their kids to private schools.  Why should the same consideration not apply to pre-school kids?

Don’t get me wrong.  I accept that many women work and there must be child-minding support available to them, and it should not be prohibitively expensive. Mothers work for one (or possibly a combination) of three reasons — self-fulfillment, to get ahead of the game financially, and/or to make ends meet. The first two are life-style choices – the ‘I can have it all’ mentality.  A career and a family.  Well good luck to you, but if the price of your lifestyle comes out of my pocket, then we have a problem.

Well good luck to you, but if the price of your lifestyle comes out of my pocket, then we have a problem.

Factor in the credentialism and academic empire-building that has re-classified child-minders as “early educators” and boosted pay rates accordingly. Now we have the problem that these over-educated baby-sitters are being underpaid.  And they are leaving for better paid jobs as baristas, leading to a struggle to fill nearly 5,000 vacancies, according to the industry. Hence, a $30 million government pay boost in this year’s budget.  Much easier than mounting a case in the Fair Work Commission.

There are two ways to approach this problem. Continue to bestow government largesse in ever larger sums, which will only entrench the inequity, or reduce child-care costs. The best way to do the latter would be to deregulate the industry and break the nexus between care and ‘early childhood learning’.  Let’s allow early learning to sink or swim in the free market.  And let’s re-regulate child-minding at the state level to mandate police checks and provision of a safe and clean environment, and leave compliance to local councils — if, that is, they can spare  time from the planet-saving work banning gas stoves and the like.

To put it in a nutshell, childcare is, for many parents, a necessity.  Early childhood indoctrination learning is, for everyone, a dubious luxury.

When the Coalition returns to government and commences the arduous task of reducing our massive debt, Dutton & Co will need to find savings in every nook and cranny.  Here is one source of major savings and a great place to start.