A gap in early childhood education threatens to stunt the development of future kindergarten students, preschools warn.
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Many three-year-olds will miss out on preschool in 2016 because service providers can’t afford to run the classes without state government support.
Preschools say its hard enough to cater for children aged four and five despite a 2.5 per cent base rate increase the state government announced last week.
“If they’re not going to fund us for the three-year-olds it’s difficult to provide it,” Jumping Jacks Community Preschool director Rina Laudadio said.
“The government needs to know that children aged three to five are on a steep learning curve to get ready for school – they need to start at three.”
The state government decided to stop payments to preschools for three-year-olds two years ago and focus on children in their year before kindergarten.
The only exception is for those centres in the lowest socio-economic areas or those with indigenous children.
Jumping Jacks could only afford to provide the service once a week in 2015 to those children aged three.
The community-based organisation absorbed much of the cost difference and said it would normally cost parents $30 more a day.
Uniting Adamstown Heights Preschool won’t offer classes for any three-year-olds in 2016.
“We’ve had to make the tough decision not to take them until they turn four,” director Bronwyn Matthews said.
Many working families are instead expected to choose long day care which attracts federal government subsidies.
“I think [state government] wants to force everyone into long day care and wash their hands of [preschools],” Mrs Matthews said.
The state government defended its funding model.
“The NSW Government is targeting funding to four and five-year-old students in the year before school,” a spokeswoman for the early education Minister Leslie Williams said.
“In rural and remote services across the state there has been a two per cent increase in enrolments of four and five-year-old children.”