Right: With many women staying in the workplace, many economists say the the economy overall would benefit from a free child-care system.
 Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Arguments against early education and childcare being free
1. Many childcare providers have been disadvantaged by the removal of fees and the transfer to government funding
Those who oppose the continuation of the government's current scheme for supporting childcare and early childhood education argue that the federal fee payments are not sufficient to maintain the sector. They maintain that while parents might be satisfied with a system that frees them from the burden of childcare costs, the system that has been put in place is insufficient to keep centres operational. What this suggests is that to fund a properly sustainable childcare service without charging fees the government would have to supply far greater funding.
In an article published in The Australian on June 15, 2020, the owner of Kids Planet Academy, Alex Guan, that the arrangements under which the federal government had relieved parents of childcare fees had been very damaging for many childcare providers.
Under the relief scheme announced in April, centres were paid up to 50 per cent of their pre-coronavirus fee revenue by the federal government, in combination with JobKeeper wage subsidies, as part of a plan to provide nationwide free childcare throughout the COVID-19 crisis. This meant a substantial loss of revenue relative to the pre-COVID19 period for many centres. Alex Guan stated, 'We just can't wait for the subsidy to end so we can charge parents as normal...We're sitting at about 45 per cent of what we normally earn. JobKeeper was meant to subsidise our labour costs, but for us we have casuals who don't get JobKeeper. So, we haven't really benefited from it. We are actually a making a loss at this point.'
Mr Guan further explained, 'Our numbers are now back to where we were before the pandemic in February ... (but) we do expect to lose some children when it's not free anymore - we're expecting about 15 per cent of children from families who have lost their jobs and reduce their days.
Even if we lose 15 per cent of our children, we still are better off. With free childcare, we weren't getting paid that much but still needed to retain the same amount of staff.'
Veronica, who runs a day care service in regional Western Australia commented similarly. She stated, 'It was good for parents, but not good for us. We still had to pay for electricity, food and expenses.' Northern New South Wales family day care operator, Rebecca Gardner, stated she also welcomed the return to the old model, as she had been unable to pay her bills during the pandemic. Ms Gardner noted, 'Nowhere in Australia during this pandemic was another workforce asked to work the same hours and standards but required to work for free.
No one but the childcare industry was made to, or we would lose the little funding we got. I have been wondering, was this done to the childcare sector because we are a female-dominated sector. Would this have happened in a male dominated sector?'
Owner of Little Zak's Academy, Carlos Zaki, claimed the changes have impacted small and large businesses alike, with some centres unable to function at all.
Mr Zaki stated, 'A lot of centres are incurring extra expenses and a lot of them have turned around and said "we're not going to take any new enrolments and we're not getting any extra money" because they can't afford the added pressure.' Mr Zaki explained that while the government measures functioned as a necessary support in the early stages of the pandemic, as child numbers have increased they are not sufficient to meet the costs of supplying childcare services. He explained, 'What they did helped the industry in general, and the industry suffered and took a hit, but the measures weren't designed for huge profits. [They were] designed to keep the industry alive which [they] did but it's not sustainable now that people are going back to childcare, it needs to be taken away.'
Opponents of government funded childcare argue that these complaints demonstrate that what the government had offered was only partially funded childcare. It has further been argued that childcare centres cannot be expected to meet the shortfall indefinitely. In order to meet the full cost of childcare the government would need to double its expenditure. It has been argued that the costs of this are unsustainable.
2. The government will be providing additional support for families and centres
The federal government announced that although childcare fees would return from July 13, 2020, a range of pre-existing and new supports would be put in place to assist both parents and childcare centres. Therefore, although there is no intention that childcare will remain free in Australia, the government will continue with and add to the supports that it made available before COVID19 affected the childcare industry.
Commenting on the range of supports made available by the federal government for families and childcare centres from July 13, the Education Minister, Dan Tehan, has stated, 'This package works to help and support those families but also to help and support the sector.'
The Australian Government's Department of Education, Skills and Employment website states, 'As Australian families begin to return to school, the workplace, and re-open businesses, the Government has announced its plan to return to the Child Care Subsidy and Additional Child Care Subsidy to support families to access affordable child care from 13 July 2020.'
Government subsidies range between 20 per cent and 85 per cent of a baseline fee. A family on median income would pay $23 a day for long day care plus any extra their centre charges above the baseline rate, which can be quite high in capital cities.
The site further states, 'From 13 July 2020, Child Care Subsidy (CCS) and Additional Child Care Subsidy (ACCS) return, along with new transition measures to support the sector and parents as they move back to the subsidy...[T]he activity test requirements will be eased from 13 July 2020 for 12 weeks, for families impacted by COVID-19, who can no longer access the same number of hours as before. During this period, impacted families will be able to access up to 100 hours per fortnight of subsidised care. This will assist families to return to the level of work, study or training they were doing before the COVID-19 crisis, or to do more than before.'
An additional link further explains the effect of relaxing the activity test requirements for parents. This measure recognises that parents' work opportunities may have been reduced by COVID19 and easing the work requirements needed to access childcare allows them to look for additional work or take up further study. The government's new provision states, 'From 13 July 2020 until 4 October 2020, individuals who can no longer engage in the same number of hours of work, training, study or other activity recognised by the CCS activity test immediately prior to the COVID-19 crisis, can advise Centrelink they meet the requirements to access 100 hours of subsidised child care, per child, per fortnight for up to 12 weeks.'
In addition, government support is also being made available to help childcare centres continue to operate during this difficult period. From 13 July 2020 all approved early childhood education and care services can receive a Transition Payment to help them transition to back to the CCS. The government's information page states, 'The Transition Payment will be made instead of the JobKeeper Payment, for the period 13 July 2020 to 27 September 2020. The Transition Payment is 25 per cent of fee revenue...The Transition Payment will be paid as a grant under the Community Child Care Fund.'
The cost to the government of this transition package to support childcare centres in the absence of JobKeeper is $708 million.
The Education Minister, Dan Tehan, has claimed that consultations with childcare providers had led the Government to believe support for the sector could be delivered more fairly by replacing JobKeeper with other payments.
The Minister has stated, 'We have consulted with the sector, listened to what they have said will be needed to make sure that demand will continue to grow and we think that we have a package that will work for families going forward.' Australian Childcare Alliance vice-president, Nesha Hutchinson, has stated that service providers had been 'shouldering the burden' of keeping centres open through the pandemic. Ms Hutchinson has supported the new arrangements claiming, 'For industry it is great that (the support) has been adjusted to allow us to remain viable.'
3. The advantages of early childhood education have been exaggerated
Those who argue that childcare and early childhood education do not warrant being government funded highlight research which disputes the educational and social benefits often claimed for these measures.
American research has indicated that the impact of early childhood education on test-scores is subject to rapid fade-out, disappearing after a year or two.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a massive study of Head Start, the nation's flagship early childhood education program, and found 'the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.'
In the 2008 to 2009 school year, when the state of Tennessee had to assign spaces in their early childhood education program by lottery, it created the conditions for a natural experiment. Researchers found (rather than the anticipated benefits for those children who had been selected for the early childhood program): 'the control children [those who had not received the formal pre-school education] caught up with the pre-k participants on [kindergarten and subsequent] tests and generally surpassed them.'
It has been claimed that, in general, education in kindergarten is not a good predictor of children's subsequent educational performance. American research conducted in 2007, looking at data from a large longitudinal study of kindergarteners, found 'no evidence that early-grade retention brings benefits to the retainees' reading and math learning toward the end of the elementary years.'
Some studies have indicated that access to early childhood education may not only fail to confer lasting advantage, it may, in fact, have a harmful effect. Lilian G. Katz, professor emerita of early childhood education at the University of Illinois has claimed, 'While early formal instruction may appear to show good test results at first, in the long term, in follow-up studies, such children have had no advantage. On the contrary, especially in the case of boys, subjection to early formal instruction increases their tendency to distance themselves from the goals of schools, and to drop out of it, either mentally or physically.'
Dr Peter Gray, writing for Psychology Today in May 2015 noted, 'The results are quite consistent from study to study: Early academic training somewhat increases children's immediate scores on the specific tests that the training is aimed at (no surprise), but these initial gains wash out within 1 to 3 years and, at least in some studies, are eventually reversed. Perhaps more tragic than the lack of long-term academic advantage of early academic instruction is evidence that such instruction can produce long-term harm, especially in the realms of social and emotional development.'
Critics have maintained that early childhood education with formal instructional goals can have damaging impacts on children, leading to anti-social behaviour and even, for some, criminality. The results of a large scale American study which looked at the impacts of direct educational instruction on preschool children found, 'Those in the Direct Instruction group had more instances of friction with other people, were more likely to have shown evidence of emotional impairment, were less likely to be married and living with their spouse, and were far more likely to have committed a crime...'
Similar concerns have been raised as a result of Canadian research. In 2007, Canadian educational journalist, Cathy Gulli, wrote, 'Now there is a growing collection of evidence that suggests just the opposite: that early childhood education actually harms children. Cognitive benefits are inconsistent at best. According to one surprising study, the more time spent in early learning facilities, the more likely that a child's social development will slow down. And mounting expectations for kids to achieve and succeed at younger and younger ages is being characterized as "white-collar child abuse"...'
Australian child psychologist, Steve Biddulph, has claimed that childcare and early childhood education promote increased leaves of stress among young children that lead to emotional damage. Cortisol studies which measure the presence of stress hormones in young babies have consistently found these levels to be higher in children in long day care. These have been linked with greater aggression and anxiety found in older children in long day care but are also known to affect the development of a range of neurotransmitters, whose pathways in the brain are still being built. These permanent brain changes are believed to affect the way the child will react to stress, anxiety and negative feelings in later life.
Biddulph argues that rather than being a trend governments should promote and fund, childcare and early childhood education has potentially damaging consequences for young children and the adolescents they become. He writes, 'Society has become more materialist and fatally neglected the place of caring ... Governments have failed to protect families from corporate pressures and many people can no longer afford to care for their own children...the results of that experiment are now emerging and the worldwide epidemic of teenage depression, anxiety and substance abuse suggests all may not be well.'
4. The cost to the government of removing fees would be too great and the scheme was never intended to be permanent
The federal government has maintained that the cost of supplying childcare and early childhood education free to Australia's entire pre-school population would be too great an expense.
Education department figures provided to the Senate indicated that the temporary free childcare or universal childcare arrangement costs temporarily put in place to sustain childcare services during the period they were most affected by COVID19 have cost the government $131m a week. This would be approximately $6.8bn a year.
Commentators have further noted that this figure of nearly $7bn does not cover what the centres had previously been receiving. It has been estimated that if this expenditure were doubled to pay centres 100 percent of their pre-coronavirus fees it would cost the government $13.6bn a year, assuming no growth in demand for childcare services. It has further been predicted that the cost would probably be higher as an increase in usage could be expected.
According to unreleased modelling from the Grattan Institute, introducing a permanent universal childcare scheme could trigger a jump in demand, and the cost to the government could be at least $12bn on top of the current cost, so about $20bn or $21bn.
The government has maintained that such expenditure was never intended to be maintained long-term. The government's aim was only ever to support childcare services through the temporary downturn that occurred when the community was first affected by the threat of COVID19. The Education Minister, Dan Tehan, has stated, 'What we have seen is demand grow and grow over the last few weeks so that we needed to change the system. This system was designed for when demand was falling. Now we are seeing demand increasing.'
Morrison and Tehan indicated that financial support was a response to the enrolment and attendance crisis created by COVID19 and was meant as a way of ensuring the industry's survival. In a joint statement the Prime Minister and the Education Minister noted that the financial support would provide temporary 'planning certainty to early childhood education and care services at a time where enrolments and attendance are highly unpredictable.'
This support was only ever guaranteed for a three-month period. The government deems that the scheme has succeeded in its achieving its objective and can now be safely removed. The federal education minister, Dan Tehan, has revealed that a review of the child care relief package had 'found it had succeeded in its objective of keeping services open and viable, with 99 per cent of around 13,400 services operational' on May 27.
The government has argued that Australia's success in combating COVID19 means that families and childcare centres no longer need the expense of childcare fees to be met by the taxpayer. Dan Tehan has stated, 'Because of our success at flattening the curve, Australia is re-opening for business and that means an increase in demand for childcare places, with attendance currently at 74 per cent of pre-COVID levels.'
|
The government also made it clear from the outset that it never intended to fund a universal free childcare service. On April 2, 2020, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison announced that parents who were classed as 'essential workers' would temporarily receive free childcare during the coronavirus crisis.
The Prime Minister stated, 'Childcare and early childhood education is critical. Particularly for those Australians who rely on it so they can go to work every day, particularly those who are working in such critical areas.'
The education minister stated, 'There is a clear priority list that we want centres to take into account. The most important of those are those essential workers and the vulnerable children.'
5. Australia's childcare and early education services are not geared to cope with becoming free to all
Many of those involved within Australian childcare centres have argued that the system is already under unsustainable strain. They claim that if the numbers were to continue to climb in response to the free availability of care, then quality of service would be likely to fall.
On June 4, 2020, Clare Masters, National Education Editor, News Corp Australia Network, noted, 'Childcare centres are reporting children are at risk with many centres forced to breach the legal ratios and the quality of care slipping dramatically over the COVID-19 period.
With attendance now rising as Australia opens back up, childcare workers say they cannot continue to look after children, perform extra cleaning and maintain safe ratios with dwindling income.'
Masters further wrote, 'Some centres...say they are over ratio with too many children and not enough staff. In many cases education programs have had to be dropped in the wake of the coronavirus crisis with educators forcing to choose between care and education or hygiene.'
Sandy, an educator from Queensland was reported to say, 'We are barely scraping in under the ratios, instead of focusing on delivering quality early education and care. We don't have the staff to pull off the floor to do the extra cleaning that we know we need to do.'
Helen Gibbons, the United Workers Union director of early learning, has claimed that the relaxing of ratios was worrying and comes as South Australia has officially moved to a one educator for 11 children ratio from one to 10. She said she was worried other states would follow and said it was 'incredibly bad timing to add to the stress and workload of educators when so much is at stake.'
Maixima Joblink reported on May 27 that many centres were advising parents not to send their children as the centres were unable to cope. The report stated, 'Angry parents have revealed that some childcare operators have told them to keep their kids at home until the current arrangements run out on June 28.
The bizarre outcome means that thousands of parents are missing out on "free" childcare despite taxpayers pumping a stunning $1.6 billion into the sector.'
Early Childhood Australia chief executive officer, Sam Page, has stated, 'Some services are allocating lower hours to all parents. Other services have asked parents what job they do and whether they need to send kids to care.'
SDN Children's Services, which operates 30 centres, has similarly asked parents to apply for bookings in advance so centres can prioritise families. The Services chief executive officer, Kay Turner, has stated, 'We need to reduce the number of children we can have attend each day so that we can continue to meet child [to] staff ratio requirements and continue to provide quality service.'