Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has said that NSW and Victoria\u2019s announcement of universal preschool for 4-year-olds must spur national efforts to make early education universal and free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senator Faruqi said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a big step forward for universal early education and it must be a catalyst for national efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is no reason why we can\u2019t see universal and free early education in every state and territory within a few years \u2014 for three and four year olds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLeadership at the state level really exposes the failure of the federal government to invest in universal early education. It seems the Commonwealth is constantly playing catch-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEnsuring universal access should involve a substantial expansion of the public and community provision of early childhood education and care, rather than handing out billions more to for-profit providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUniversal access must go hand in hand with a proper plan to address serious underlying workforce issues with pay and conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is a big change and unions, existing centres, early education experts and school communities must be consulted and brought along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEarly education is critical for children\u2019s development. It\u2019s great to see this finally being recognised by NSW and Victoria.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Education spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi has said that NSW and Victoria\u2019s announcement of universal preschool for 4-year-olds must spur national efforts to make early education universal and free. Senator Faruqi said: \u201cThis is a big step forward for universal early education and it must be a catalyst for national efforts. … Continue reading “Universal preschool must be national and free”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17042,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17041\/revisions\/17042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}