An early education provider receives 10-fold more funding for its Wodonga centre as it does for its Albury centres under a border anomaly.
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Goodstart Early Learning is a not-for-profit early learning provider with four centres in Albury and one in Wodonga.
For its preschool program the Wodonga centre gets $3000 a place from the state government while the Albury centres will soon qualify for $300 a place.
Goodstart Early Learning advocacy manager John Cherry said more than 60 per cent of children aged 4-5 years in NSW attended preschool programs in their long day care centre rather than sessional preschools.
He said this occurred either because long day centres’ hours of operation better suited working parents or there was a lack of sessional preschools in the community.
“The NSW government receives around $130 million a year from the federal government to provide access to preschool but up to now has refused to pass on any of that funding to the 60 per cent of children attending preschool programs in long day care,” he said.
This year, following direction by the federal government, NSW agreed to pass on $300 a child if they were in a long day care centre.
“This is a welcome first step, but is still just one-fifth of what they receive from the federal government and one-10th of what is provided to long day care centres in Victoria.
“The Victorian government provides $3000 per place for preschool programs in long day care centres, compared to just $300 per place in NSW.”
Mr Cherry said there was a natural flow-on effect from the funding discrepancy.
“This means preschool rooms in Wodonga are much better funded and have more access to additional resources, excursions, staffing and professional development than preschool rooms in Albury,” he said.
“We would like to see federal preschool funding fully passed on to the service where the child actually attends preschool so that all children can receive access to properly funded, quality preschool programs – regardless of who is providing their preschooling or in which state.”
An independent review of the federal government’s Universal Access to Preschool Funding program last year found NSW was the only state that failed to meet the program’s objective of 95 per cent of children accessing preschool in the year before school.
Mr Cherry said Victoria had higher NAPLAN scores than NSW in year 3 and a lower percentage of children starting year 1 developmentally vulnerable.
