Closing every childcare centre reported for a quality breach is not feasible despite calls for tougher rules to protect vulnerable children, Australia’s largest regulator says.
An inquiry on Wednesday was told concerns safety breaches were not acted upon, protecting services rather than children.
But with a push to expand early learning access nationwide, shutting down every service reported to the regulator would cause havoc for parents, the head of the NSW education department said.
“I know people look for a simple answer here, but it’s not that simple,” education secretary Murat Dizdar told state MPs.
“A service might be doing its job outstandingly well and in a regulatory visit might not have met the menu requirement.”
But Mr Dizdar argued regulatory responsibilities should be cut free from his department because of the perceived conflict of interest in being a major provider of care and a watchdog.
NSW’s childcare regulator sits inside the education department, effectively making the secretary the ultimate regulator, he told the parliamentary inquiry into childcare.
Experts argued the sector was overrun with for-profit providers, which were incentivised to provide the bare minimum for children and staff.
“Large, for-profit providers pay less, hire less experienced workers, have more turnover,” Professor Gabrielle Meagher told the inquiry.
An undervaluing of the value of both early childhood teachers and the education they provided young children was also driving profiteering and poor oversight.
“Having such prolific for-profit provisioning says it’s a service, not education,” Professor Marianne Fenech said.
The pair slammed the perverse incentives allowing a surge in profit-driven providers and the failure to mandate a need for all providers to act first and foremost in the interests of the 1.3 million Australian children in childcare.
Parents and governments paying for services needed a far better understanding of the operations of childcare providers, the academics argued.
The for-profit childcare sector has grown 30 per cent since 2015, while not-for-profits declined eight per cent, Community Early Learning Australia said.
“The over-reliance on for-profit services to meet demand for education and care services has failed to ensure access for all families,” the early childhood body said.
Increasing staff pay and making training more affordable were common themes among more than 150 submissions to the inquiry.
One educator who made a submission to the inquiry said the for-profit system often resulted in lower staffing levels and less care for children.
“After having experienced working for a not-for-profit service, I will never return to the dire conditions that permeate the for-profit part of the sector,” the anonymous submission read.
The inquiry comes amid nationwide scrutiny on the regulation and safety of childcare after shocking reports of abuse.
G8 Education, the operator of a centre where educator Joshua Dale Brown allegedly abused children in his care, said in a submission the rest of its staff were struggling emotionally while working through the fallout of the abuse revelations.
Brown is accused of abusing eight children aged under two at a centre in Melbourne’s southwest between April 2022 and January 2023.
Meanwhile, federal Labor has enlisted consulting giant Deloitte to design a universal childcare scheme for the nation.
Deloitte will spend two years assessing whether a flat fee of $10 a day could replace the current childcare subsidy, which is calculated based on household income.
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