A child’s right to education should never depend on what their parents do — or cannot do.
Early childhood education is an essential public service. We have known for a long time that early learning is critical for children’s development, lifelong opportunities, and workforce productivity.
There is not one person in this country who would not benefit from ensuring that all children have access to education in their early years.
All children, no matter their primary carers’ income, employment status or postcode, deserve the best start in life.
But restrictive and punitive measures, such as the Child Care Subsidy (CCS) activity test, currently lock hundreds of thousands of Australian children out of this essential service.
Abolishing the childcare activity test is a critical step towards guaranteeing universal education.
The activity test restricts the number of subsidised childcare hours that families are entitled to based on the amount of recognised activity they participate in, often taking the form of paid work.
Did you know?
The test was designed to incentivise parents to rejoin the workforce, but instead, it has had the opposite effect — the complex and onerous system prevents 40,000 parents across Australia from accessing paid work, disproportionately affecting women.
The activity test also unfairly penalises families from disadvantaged backgrounds and fails to recognise the diverse needs of First Nations, single parent and low-income families. As a result, around 160,000 kids are currently being denied an early childhood education.
It’s time for the Labor Government to stop kicking the can down the road and face what the evidence has been telling us for years — that restrictive measures like the activity test have no place in our education system.
Every day that Labor delays action, is a day that our children are denied access to early education and parents are kept out of paid work.
That is why the Greens are calling on the government to immediately abolish the activity test, and restore every child’s right to an early education.
This is just one part of the Greens' plan to make education free and universal for life. We want to provide free education from childhood through to school, uni and TAFE.