One of Australia’s leading early learning providers has cautioned against governments relying on ownership structures as a primary indicator of quality and safety for children.
Guardian Childcare and Education has urged governments not to become “caught up in a concerted, invalid and counter-productive campaign against for-profit (childcare) centres”.
“If this misleading narrative continues to be perpetrated unchecked, it could result in Australian families having fewer, quality childcare and education options,” Guardian says in a submission to a Senate inquiry.
“It is highly counterproductive to lump all operators into a contrived philosophical battle between for-profit and not-for-profit operators. The biggest losers from such an approach will be families and children.
“The facts suggest there are good and not-so-good operators in both areas of the sector.”
In its submission to the Senate Inquiry into the quality and safety of Australia’s early childhood education and care system, Guardian Childcare says it is happy to benchmark its quality and safety standards against any other operators in the sector.
The submission warns against governments becoming so overzealous in their regulation enforcement that early learning providers become disincentivised to adopt standards and policies above the minimum requirements.
It also says that much of the commentary comparing quality standards between for-profit and not-for-profit providers is misleading because it fails to take into account the age of centres and the span of hours of the centres being assessed.
“Those lobbying against for-profit early learning typically make the broad claim that these commercial operations exist purely to make profits,” the submission says.
“In reality, great organisations that thrive typically do so because they are passionate about what they do. Revenue success and profits are a by-product of that.”
The submission says the sector is highly regulated for good reason.
However, there is also a danger of “over-regulation to a point where the well-being of children is compromised by the constant distraction of non-prioritised or subjective compliance actions or – even worse – ad hoc regulatory actions in response to rushed political responses”.
“There is also a real danger that governments are creating a disincentive for childcare operators to have safety measures that go beyond minimum standards.” Guardian says.
“If providers are constantly and publicly breached for minor infringements of internal standards, despite still meeting the regulatory standard, there will be no incentive to set those higher standards.
“In fact, it would encourage operators to lessen standards to avoid breaches that might unfairly tarnish their reputations.”
The submission says much of the interpretation of quality standards in the sector fails to take into account the nuances in the numbers.
For example, National Quality Standard data tends to suggest that community preschools have higher quality standards than other operators.
However, these figures were skewed by the fact that these preschools operate for limited hours and typically service a very narrow age group of children (primarily 4-year-olds).
It was misleading to compare NQS results from this limited offering with services provided over long hours and a broad age range for the benefit of busy families with diverse needs.
“A comparison of NQS Victorian and NSW results of not-for-profit preschools with not-for-profit multi-age, long day care settings clearly demonstrates this (using the ACECQA March Quarter data),” the Guardian submission says.
“In this comparison, community preschools have almost 50 percent of services rated as Exceeding (the NQS standards) whereas, for community long daycare centres, this falls to 26 percent. This demonstrates the difficulties in providing high quality care to a wider range of children, for longer hours.”
The submission says, when comparing long day care services, both for-profit and not-for-profit centres record high results when Exceeding and Meeting (NQS) standards are combined.
In NSW, 97 percent of community long day care centres are rated Meeting or Exceeding the standard, compared with 93 percent for private operators.
In Victoria, the figures are 97 percent and 95 percent respectively.
“Centres are far less likely to secure Exceeding in their first five years of operation with less than 4.5 percent of all long day care for-profit and not-for-profit centres being rated Exceeding – compared to more than 15 percent for those open 5-10 years and close to 20 percent for those open for more than 10 years,” the submission says.
“More than 90 percent of centres in their first five years of operation are for-profit centres. Therefore, it stands to reason that not-for-profits would have a higher percentage of all centres rated Exceeding.”
The full Guardian Childcare and Education submission can be found at here
