Queensland's Free Kindy program labelled 'ill thought-out' causing widespread confusion among centres and parents

While a colourful television campaign promised families the Queensland government was “making kindy free” this year, the rollout of the program has resulted in widespread confusion and disappointed parents.

Child care centres have labelled the program as “ill thought-out” and “badly managed”, with limited guidance and support from the Education Department, and reams of extra paperwork.

While Education Queensland insists the system is fair, the reality is, for those families sending their children to long day care the return has not been clear cut.

There’s concern the program is favouring families with flexible working hours, who can send their children to sessional kindergartens.

When the program was first announced in June last year, the then Palaszczuk government said it was “making kindergarten free for all Queensland families” from January 1.

The media statement at the time said the $645 million investment would help “every Queensland child get a great start in life and support parents in their return to work”.

The program includes 15 hours of free kindy per week for 40 weeks of the year at government approved centres.

“Free kindergarten is set to save families around $4,600 per year, putting money back in the pockets of mums, dads, and carers where it’s needed,” the statement said.

Experts and providers are now calling for a simpler, fairer system, with a blanket 30 hours of early learning per week, which does not depend on a family’s income, or choice of centre.

“Unfortunately, I think what’s happened as it’s rolled out, is it’s had a differential impact on families because of the way that long day care works,” Queensland-based clinical psychologist, family researcher and kindy parent Dr Divna Haslam said.

“It hasn’t impacted all families equally.”

Day care families see minimal weekly savings

Kara Van Der Walt said she was excited by the prospect of sending her son Kobe to kindergarten through his day care centre this year.

“Obviously, with the announcement from the government last year, that it was going to be free, that was very exciting. I was like, oh this is gonna save us a whole bunch of money,” she said.

“Looking at the finer details, it hasn’t actually been free, and then trying to obtain the finer details from the directors and things like that has been quite a challenge.”

Sole-trader Amy Bates said she thought the savings would be greater.

“We were quite surprised. We didn’t anticipate it to be huge, but we thought it could maybe be something a little bit more,” she said.

“Child care probably comes in third out of our all of our bills, so yes, I’m working a little bit extra to cover mortgage and shopping around to cover the extra grocery bills.”

Some families have described the government’s marketing of free kindy as deceptive.

Queensland mother Tara* who otherwise would not have used a kindergarten, said she found herself in a “nightmare,” not realising there was a difference in how sessional and long day care centres were funded.

Her local community kindy had a 24-child waitlist, so Tara enrolled her daughter in a long day care kindergarten for the minimum period — 11 hours across two days.

But she said it was never made clear by the centre that she would be charged $230 for two days a week, because she did not receive the child care subsidy.

Tara told the ABC the situation placed her in financial distress and that she may need to remove her child from kindy.

Long day care vs sessional kindy

All three families send their children to kindergarten at long day care centres.

Most Queensland families do according to Education Queensland – about 70 per cent.

The Free Kindy calculation for those families is not black and white — the benefit depends on their federal child care subsidy rate, the centres program hours, daily fee of the service and other factors.

For the other 30 per cent of families, who were able to send their children to standalone kindergartens, which run during school hours each term, it is a much simpler calculation: completely free for the 15 hours, spread across two to three days depending on the kindy’s structure.

Places have been limited at those centres and the part-time program does not suit a lot of working families.

Education Queensland said in a statement it was adamant the program was fair once all subsidies were applied.

“Regardless of income or financial position, all children receive 15 hours free kindy for 40 weeks a year in both sessional and long day care approved services,” a spokesperson said.

Queensland Education Minister Di Farmer declined the ABC’s request for an interview.

[datawrapper]

Families now sending kids to ‘two schools’

To achieve maximum savings, some families have enrolled their children in two different centres.

Not-for-profit child care provider Goodstart Early Learning has described the situation as “absurd” in its submission to the Productivity Commission, which is currently reviewing a range of early learning policies in Australia.

Advocacy manager John Cherry said having children attending multiple centres was especially difficult for disadvantaged children.

“They’re having to develop two different relationships, they’ve got two different peer groups,” he said.

“It’s basically like going to two different schools, so from that point of view, we don’t think that’s optimal.”

Some centres have been discouraging families from taking their kindy funding elsewhere.

Private Brisbane child care provider Timber Tots hiked kindy fees by $17 a day, offering families a discount if they used free kindy at the centre.

The independent Camp Hill centre also discouraged families from splitting care, warning there’d be a fee if families decided to switch kindergartens.

“If families have decided or consider taking a place at a sessional Kindy in 2024, a reminder that families who have allocated funding to Timber Tots and then decide to shift their funding to another care provider, a Termination Fee of $500 will be applied,” the centre said in an email to families.

“Families who choose not to allocate their kindy funding to the centre will still be able to continue care at the centre but may not receive the days they currently have.”

‘Ill though-out’ funding scheme

In a statement, Timber Tots owner Jana Walker said the fee hike had to be applied for the centre to continue its kindy program.

“The $17 fee increase reflects the fee increase the government required us to provide for their paperwork and will be a daily rate moving forward,” she said.

“The $500 fee reflects an administration charge only and would only ever be charged if a family decided to leave at short notice.

“Without these changes we would not have been able to run a kindy program at all.”

Ms Walker described the rollout of free kindy as an “ongoing saga” for independent centres like hers.

“Issues run deep in this ill thought-out and badly-managed funding scheme,” she said.

“I believe the people who created this should be questioned as to their process and procedures, poorly run out communication, and even worse — the impact it has had on the funding programs, which communicate to the parents and their accounts.

“We currently remain without support from the Queensland government.

“We [centres] are taking the blame for it as we are the point of call for parents and ultimately become the face of the problem as we are the only people who they can speak with. Centres are just trying to do their best in the situation.”

There are also widespread reports of delays to families seeing free kindy applied to their accounts.

Binod Budhathoki’s child, who attends a centre at Strathpine on Brisbane’s north side, has finished term one without any free kindy refunds.

“When I look at the invoices, it’s the same amount as the previous year, I asked them what’s going on? The fees haven’t come down,” he said.

Edge Early Learning told the ABC the issue had since been resolved and families would be refunded for the term.

Goodstart described the rollout as a “major systems change.”

“It has meant some major, major changes for our software provider, which provides our billing services and through whom our subsidies are paid,” Mr Cherry said.

“It is certainly challenging. We’re learning as we go.”

Education Queensland urged families who were having issues with the scheme to make contact. It said monitoring price-gouging in child care was a federal issue.

Fairer, simpler model needed

Goodstart Early Learning, which represents 10 per cent of the early childhood sector in Australia, has called for a fairer approach to early education funding.

In its submission to the review, it said the current structure of Free Kindy funding could leave low-income families financially worse off than those on high incomes.

It noticed a trend of more affluent families drifting to free sessional kindies, and in some states, an over-representation of vulnerable families in day care centres.

“While we are yet to fully explore the reasons for this … high-income families are generally more likely to have the capacity (e.g. through flexible work) needed to deal with shorter hours,” the submission said.

” … and navigate government approval processes to secure free sessional places earlier.

“Lower income families … who have no capacity to work from home (such as those working in retail and hospitality) are likely to find maintaining workforce participation more difficult with shorter preschool days and holiday breaks.”

Dr Haslam said while the Free Kindy program was extremely beneficial to children and their families, a fairer, simpler structure was needed.

“I would say that there will be very, very few families that fully understand how the Free Kindy subsidy works,” she said.

Mr Cherry agreed.

“There’s a whole bunch of things we can do to make the system simpler, and still ensure that there’s reasonable return for taxpayers,” he said.

“Making the means test easy to understand for very low income families, getting rid of things like withholding rates on child care.”

Both said a better model would be 30 hours of free early education for all children under five, regardless of a family’s income.

It was a recommendation made by the Productivity Commission in November, which is still examining how early education could be done better across Australia.

Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia have independently committed to giving families 30 hours of care.

The Productivity Commission’s final report is due in June.

*Tara not her real name.