Strengthening quality and transparency in early childhood education and care

9 October 2025

The Productivity Commission (PC) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Education and Employment References Committee’s inquiry into the quality and safety of Australia’s early childhood education and care system. 

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) can support better outcomes for children – particularly those experiencing disadvantage or vulnerability – throughout their lives. ECEC is also a critical enabler of parents’ participation in the labour force, especially mothers. As such, a well functioning ECEC system – one that is accessible, affordable, high quality, inclusive and safe – can provide net benefits not only for the children and families who use services, but also for the Australian community more broadly. 

In 2023-24, the PC undertook a public inquiry into Australia’s ECEC sector at the request of the Australian Government. The inquiry’s final report was released in September 2024. It contains 56 recommendations to improve Australia’s ECEC sector, and to transition to a universal system – where every child aged 0–5 whose family wishes to use ECEC would be able to access high quality services for at least 30 hours or three days a week for 48 weeks of the year (PC 2024a). 

This submission summarises aspects of the report that are relevant to this inquiry’s terms of reference, namely regarding ECEC quality regulation, workforce, funding and system transparency.

In addition to the 2023-24 inquiry, the annual Report on Government Services – produced by the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision with the PC as secretariat – reports on the performance of ECEC services (SCRGSP 2025). The PC also produces the Closing the Gap Information Repository, which reports data on the targets and indicators agreed as part of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (PC 2025). This includes reporting against outcome 3 (early childhood education) and outcome 4 (early child development) of the Agreement.
 

The PC provided the submission to the review on 3 October 2025 and it was published on our website on 9 October 2025.