The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW applauds the NSW Government for its consistent commitment to assist in increasing the supply of affordable early childhood education and care capacity through community preschools.

Although ACA NSW is not asking for any withdrawal of the NSW Government from such a commitment, we have sought the clarification of the NSW Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning (the Hon Sarah Mitchell MLC) about how she and the NSW Government would measure the return of investment of the corresponding taxpayer contributions given.

The NSW Government has made $10m available to the community preschool sector each year via the Start Strong Capital Works Grants Program for some time now. In 2018, 17 existing community preschools were successful in receiving about $8m of the $10m annual allocation. And an estimated 708 new places are anticipated to have been created.

In context, these 708 new places represent 0.002% of the 299,405 already approved number of places. And each of the 708 new places has received the effective equivalent of about $11,299 per place.

We are also asking the NSW Government on how many of those newly created places each year become occupied, especially in the context of a multi-year oversupply where the Commonwealth Government reports 94% of all centres are reporting vacancies.