The release of the Productivity Commission's (Commission) draft report on Childcare and Early Childhood Learning on 22 July 2014 (Report) has attracted criticism from schools who are concerned by recommendations that they should offer longer hours of childcare for busy parents. Coincidentally, the Report has been released at a time when some schools are launching legal action to challenge the expectation that they should be paying for staff resources outside school hours.
Most children in Australia have some exposure to formal, non-parental care and/or learning prior to starting school. In the Report the Commission promotes its vision for schools to increase their responsibility to provide outside school care to students, as a way to alleviate the current pressures on the early childhood education and care (ECEC) system. Although the Federal Government (Government) currently contributes $5 billion a year in funding to the childcare or early learning sector, the Report makes it clear that 'for families with children, there will always be some trade-offs in work and lifestyle, and the responsibility for raising children and funding their care and early childhood education should lie predominantly with the family.'
The Commission recommends that State and Territory governments should direct all schools to take responsibility for organising the provision of an outside school hours care service for their students (including students in attached preschools), where demand is sufficiently large for a service to be viable. Schools play an important role in the Commission's vision of an aspirational ECEC system.
The Commisions vision is one where schools:
But some schools are questioning how this utopian vision will work in practice. Recent media articles have reported concerns about parents who either can’t find childcare or are reluctant to pay, and who are dropping their children off early or collecting them late from school, expecting teachers to supervise in their absence. David Ferguson from the NSW Teachers Federation believes that 'the core work at schools is education and this should not be confused with child minding'. Mr Ferguson believes that more government money should be provided to support before and after school child care and it should not be the responsibility of the principal to organise it.
If schools allow parents to deliberately leave their children on school premises outside school hours and outside formal before/after school care, a school owes a duty of care just as they would during school hours. If the Commissions vision is realised schools may be forced to extend staff hours or hire extra staff just to monitor the safety of children who spend extra hours at school.
The issue of who should pay for staff who provide out-of-school-hours care in the government school sector is currently the subject of a South Australian Supreme Court (Court) mediation between the South Australian Education Department and Rose Park Primary School (Rose Park). News.com.au reports that Rose Park's governing council is seeking the Court's ruling on who — it or the Education Department — is the legal employer of out-of-school-hours care staff. Rose Park wants the Education Department to accept responsiblity for this expense as it's concerned about the issue of liability and negligence at after-hours school care programs, if the schools had to cover this resource.
It will be interesting to see what the Court decides and its decision might prove to be the tip of the iceberg on this issue given the suggestions made by the Commission in relation to increasing school responsiblity for caring for students. The Commission's final report is due at the end of October 2014 and it will continue to seek feedback from the public until 5 September 2014. Public seminars on the Report are being held throughout August. The Commission has published a press release which contains a summary of the key issues assessed in the Report.
What is your before or after school care policy? Do you agree with the Commission's suggestions?