The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW remains committed to the best possible educational outcomes for all Australian children. The 2017 Annual Early Learning & Childcare Services Survey referred to by ACA NSW was conducted by an independent research organisation and was responded to by 31.48% of all services across NSW (that is 892 approved service providers, directors and nominated supervisors, who operate over 1,700 services). Of which, 36.24% were not-for-profit and community-based, and 44.17% were privately/family-owned services but not publicly-listed.

Following a similar response in 2016,  the 2017 survey found, for example, as a result of the NQF, 62% stated that staff were spending over a third of their time on administrative tasks, 51.23% stated it had a negative impact on costs to services, 58.9% stated that the change in ratios had a negative or large negative impact on the cost of running their centres, only 14% stated that the NQF had significant positive impact on children’s educational outcomes, only 7% stated that the NQF had a significant positive impact on children’s socialisation outcomes, and 61.52% stated that the NQF had a negative effect on time spent on paperwork.

ACA NSW President Lyn Connolly highlighted the latest 2017 survey findings in order to seek a long overdue and constructive re-examination of the early childhood education and care framework particularly in New South Wales in terms of its effectiveness for children and cost to families, governments and taxpayers. With over 800,000 children still not enrolled in any early childhood education and care nationally, Mrs Connolly is reflecting ACA NSW’s members’ concerns that it is necessitating more and more taxpayer funds to be committed to support the sector, yet the current model is unlikely to achieve the desired outcomes for all children (hence Australia's poor ranking (30th out of 35) among OECD countries and the recently proposed introduction for NAPLAN-lite for Year 1 students). Furthermore, Mrs Connolly is highlighting ACA NSW’s apprehensions that families will still not experience affordable childcare fees in the foreseeable future, and privately-owned as well as community-based services will be put at further risk of operational viability.

The status quo is simply not working on a number of fronts. ACA NSW will continue to advance its members’ concerns with governments, parliamentarians, and stakeholders, to try to improve the status quo towards one that would benefit ALL children and achieve affordability for ALL families.