The Labour Party’s childcare subsidy will have limited benefit for ECE providers says the Early Childhood Council.

“More funding in our sector is always welcome, but a healthy ECE sector needs healthy providers too. A new approach to solving ECE cost pressures is needed urgently,” said ECC CEO Simon Laube.

“70% of providers we surveyed aren’t confident they can recruit teachers now – services are down-sizing and closing, we expect the immediate impact for parents will be longer waiting lists for places in centres.”

While the subsidy should mean more children attending ECE as the cost goes down for parents, relief for providers will come only indirectly, if at all. Their resilience will continue to be severely tested between now and April 2023 when the subsidy comes into effect.

Unlike schools, ECE providers are only funded for children that attend, and with attendance at record lows and many families disengaging from early learning through COVID, there’s hope this will be the circuit breaker that brings them back.

“For providers struggling with inflation, Pay Parity underfunding and low attendance, this will be too little too late – 56% of our surveyed members are pessimistic about their financial viability over the next year,” said Simon Laube.

“We called for government action on Pay Parity by Christmas or we risk more centre closures, which has been ignored. Our members are asking when the government step up and will fix our whole sector, not one piece at a time.”

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