March 13th, 2025
Latest News
ACA NSW members would be familiar with the NSW Department of Education's Flexible Initiatives Trial (FIT) as advised via:
ACA NSW's Inner Circle event with ACECQA and the NSW Department of Education;
ACA NSW's summary of the NSW Budget for 2023/2024;
ACA NSW's Priorities! reminders; and
ACA NSW's GrantsWatch.
The FIT is the NSW Government's evolution of ACA NSW's original ask of leveraging the previous NSW Coalition Government's Regulatory Sandbox program. Regulatory sandboxing is a government mechanism to try new ways of achieving better results and/or more efficiently without sacrificing fundamentals for example children's safety.
Thus far, two rounds of funding have been completed, with Round 2 distributing $5.9m of the $20m allocation.
After both rounds, there is a growing concern that funding thus far has been centrally about increasing capacity using taxpayer funds without facilitating superior and more effective approaches (for children, educators, teachers and services), nor attempting to achieve any cost-efficiencies.
Such use of taxpayer funds is arguably not the best use of finite resources especially given the 100+50 new preschools on school grounds initiative, the NSW IPART's Independent Market Monitoring Report on identifying undersupply and other government funded programs to increase capacity.
In anticipation of Round 3, ACA NSW intends to work with as many of its members to submit worthwhile proposals that truly meet the original objectives of regulatory sandboxing.
For any further information/clarification, please do not hesitate to contact ACA NSW via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au.
PUBLISHED: 13 MARCH 2025
