Tuesday, 21 February 2023

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (19:20): (50) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, and the action I seek is for the minister to meet with early childhood teachers and early childhood education support staff in my community to discuss the Andrews Labor government’s free kinder policy. The Andrews Labor government has a significant track record in delivering for the youngest Victorians in our state. Our increase of four-year-old kinder to 15 hours was a revolutionary policy and really led the nation in our support for those first thousand days of a child’s life. But we were not done there, and we understood that three-year-old kinder just like four-year-old kinder was so impactful on the development of young Victorians. So that policy to deliver three-year-old kinder but make it free for families and for our communities has been truly extraordinary.

There is a cost saving of up to $2500 for families, and we know how impactful that is. Especially in this high interest rate time frame and period when families are struggling to make ends meet, they know that the Andrews Labor government is supporting them with free kinder to support not only education outcomes but the household budget, and of course that is proportionate support for families to re-enter the workforce. We know in terms of gender-responsive budgeting this is a really critical area in supporting women back into the workforce as well.

The pre-prep policy is 30 hours of that wonderful early childhood experience going to prep to really enhance that transition into the primary school years. The member for Carrum and now Minister for Planning and I worked on a joint report for the then Deputy Premier and education minister James Merlino on the transition from early years into primary school and how significant that is. Pre-prep answers some of those challenges around enhancing that transition and that connection and giving our youngest Victorians the best start in prep. We know it is such a big leap in that development and we know the importance of play-based learning that goes all the way through to the age of eight, so pre-prep is a wonderful policy.

I also want to give a big shout-out to the early childhood educators, who have been toiling away for decades supporting our kids in early childhood settings. They do an outstanding job. We need so many more of them. We need over 10,000 more early childhood educators, so if anyone is considering a fulfilling and rewarding career, think about an option in early childhood education. It is one of the most wonderful and rewarding things you can do in giving back to community, so we want more people to choose that into the future. That ambition of early childhood education cannot be realised without surging the workforce capacity. I cannot wait for the minister to come down to the Mordialloc electorate and meet with some of the early childhood educators that are making the free kinder policy and our reforms in early childhood education possible.