Quality early learning experiences are essential to help your children to thrive, and to help us meet the government's objective to give all our children a great start.
For more than a decade, the Queensland Government has worked with the early childhood and not-for-profit sectors to achieve great outcomes for Queensland children.
Over 10 years ago, when the basis for the current funding arrangments were developed, only 29% of children participated in kindergarten. Today, that figure is 98%.
In 2009, 29.6% of Queensland children were developmentally vulnerable on 1 or more domains of the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC). This has dropped to 24.7% but remains higher than the national average.
Independent review
The Queensland Government wants every Queensland child to have the opportunity to access early learning and development programs that will set them up for success later in life.
Optimising outcomes for Queensland children was an independent review of the Department of Education's early childhood education funding and delivery arrangements.
The Optimising Outcomes for Children Review was commissioned to ensure that the Queensland Government’s funding and service delivery arrangements were optimised to enable all Queensland children to have the best start to life.
The
Optimising outcomes for Queensland children – Kindergarten review findings provides an overview of the findings. The review included comprehensive stakeholder engagement to inform the findings. Interviews were held with 45 services, 9 peak organisations, the 5 Central Governing Bodies and 9 parent focus groups. The 4 tailored online surveys were distributed with more than 1,500 responses from services, families, educators and other interested parties.
The findings of the review and the critical success factors have informed the new Kindergarten Funding Reforms announced by the Queensland Government.
Key features of the reform
Keeping kindy cheaper
New targeted subsidies for families attending a kindergarten program at a long day care or sessional kindergarten service to reduce out-of-pocket costs, particularly for
low- and middle-income families receiving the
Family Tax Benefit. Learn more about
kindy savings and how kindy will be cheaper.
Kindy in regional and remote communities
New service location subsidies for sessional kindergarten services and long day care services delivering kindergarten in identified remote and regional communities to assist with teacher attraction and retention.
Inclusive kindy
New inclusion funding to build capability of sessional kindergarten services and long day care services delivering kindergarten to ensure educators are ready to support all children and families to feel welcome, engaged and culturally safe in the service.
Expansion of Kindy Uplift
Expanding the
Kindy Uplift program to more services to address educational need of children experiencing vulnerability and/or disadvantage, and improve longer term educational outcomes.
The new kindy funding reform is in response to the 2019 Deloitte Access Economics 'Optimising outcomes for children: A review of early childhood education funding and arrangements in Queensland'. Find out more and read the
report summary.
The Department of Education continues to work with the early childhood sector to implement these historic reforms to ensure that all children benefit. Read more about
kindy funding.