The National Cabinet is meeting to discuss women’s economic security.

Thanks to thousands of teachers and educators like you who have been campaigning for years, early childhood education is on the agenda and it is essential that critical workforce issues are part of this discussion

This is big. We’ve seen the power of the National Cabinet and its ability to drive important and urgent reforms throughout the pandemic. So we know that if they focus on early learning reform, there is huge potential for change.

To capitalise on this opportunity, we’ve outlined five key actions that the National Cabinet should take to reform early childhood education. But Premiers and the Prime Minister need to hear from as many people as possible, calling on them to implement these five key things.

Will you send a message to our leaders in the National Cabinet now, urging them to take these five key actions to reform early childhood education?

The five key actions we’re calling on the National Cabinet to implement, to take Australia along the path to a universal, high quality system with an appropriately recognised workforce are:

1. Agree to a new Federal-State Partnership to deliver universal three-year-old preschool across the country to match the partnership agreement in place for four-year-old preschool.
2. Lift the childcare subsidy to 95% for all children and set agreed fee caps.
3. Make the childcare subsidy available to all children regardless of the service type and the income or work status of the parents.
4. Start workforce planning for a universal system and fund appropriate pay and conditions for educators to end the problem of skill shortages, high vacancy rates and high staff turnover rates across the sector.
5. To achieve these outcomes, we ask that early education and childcare become a part of the National Cabinet reform agenda to deal with complexities of the system and build a true national universal system.