Wednesday, 17 May 2023

 Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (17:33): (215) My matter is for the Minister for Early Education and Pre-Prep and concerns our transformative early childhood reforms. How are our Best Start, Best Life reforms supporting our children and families in my electorate of Eastern Victoria, specifically in the local government areas of Mornington Peninsula, South Gippsland, Wellington and East Gippsland? This year kids all over Victoria started free kinder thanks to the government’s Best Start, Best Life reforms. Participating kindergartens in the Eastern Victoria Region will provide free three- and four-year-old kindergarten for up to 15 hours a week, helping families with the rising cost of living by saving them up to $2500 for each child each year. Thanks to these reforms a generation of three-year-olds can now access play-based learning at a critical time in their development, both emotionally and academically.

There are so many examples of the impact this is making across Eastern Victoria. I visited Yarram and met the team and kids at the brilliant Yarram Early Learning Centre. It is growing faster than anyone imagined, in part due to free three-year-old kinder. So to help meet demand the Victorian state government are investing $2 million for new rooms through the Building Blocks program. The benefits of this policy run deeper than meets the eye. It ties together so many threads of what our government stands for: delivering a fairer, healthier and more prosperous Victoria. There are also the great savings to time that these investments are making for families with the development of kindergartens at school sites to reduce the number of drop-offs in the morning.

I am proud to say that Korumburra Primary School is one of the schools that it was recently announced would have a kinder built on site. A new two-room centre that opens to an outdoor learning and play space will be built at the school. It means 66 more kids aged three and four from the local community will be able to access kinder on site at the local primary school. Having the kindergarten and school together will help local children make a smooth transition from preschool to prep and make drop-offs for families with kinder- and school-aged children simpler.

This initiative will obviously be good for children’s development. Research tells us that 90 per cent of a child’s brain development occurs before the age of five. That is why a high-quality play-based education is critical for the development of life skills that will set children up for the future. But it will also be good for families. Parents, particularly women, can get back to work, which is a long-term investment in our people and our state’s productivity. It means those extra hours parents work can go towards the family and make a net gain for their time, not just paying kinder bills.

Gumnuts Early Learning Centre in Sale have just opened their brand new kinder building with a lot of excitement from the volunteer committee, the staff, the kids and local families. Gumnuts received a $1.5 million Building Blocks capacity grant for a modular kindergarten to provide another 66 free three- and four-year-old kinder spots. I visited just before it was finished to see the final touches being made. Finally, a huge thanks to the amazing early childhood educators who make everything happen on the ground in our wonderful early education centres.