BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE

JULY 24, 2023

It’s Early Learning Matters Week, and although this is an important event in Australia, early learning definitely matters elsewhere as well!  

Given the opportunity, every child benefits when they’re dunked into a rich, engaging and personalised early learning program, and although all services aren’t created equal and governments invest differently in education and care, it’s interesting to see which countries are winning when it comes to early learning.  

So, let’s have a look at two front-runners – Iceland and Canada – and see how Australia compares. 

Iceland is a little nation that invests heavily in early childhood education and care (ECEC). 

This cool country spends 1.7% of its gross domestic product (the value of all the goods and services it produces during a specific time) on ECEC.  

This is more than twice what most other countries invest, and it means that Icelandic families only spend around 5% of their income on childcare, compared to the 17% spent by Australian couples on an average wage, or the very scary 37% spent by average-earners in New Zealand (according to 2022 OECD data).   

There’s movement in these percentages, depending on families’ individual circumstances, but it’s clear that the Icelandic government’s childcare investment pays off.  

Iceland was ranked second overall in UNICEF’s Where Do Rich Countries Stand on Childcare? report, but took out first place for that all-important thing called ‘quality.’  

Iceland’s childcare quality was found to be streets ahead of Luxembourg, Sweden and Norway (the countries ranked first, third and fourth overall). 

And let’s not forget the childcare provided by Icelandic parents!  

This is supported by an amazing parental leave system, which gives both parents six months’ parental leave at 80% of their average total salary (yes, 80%).  

One parent can transfer six weeks leave to the other parent, and although Australia’s Parental Leave Pay is being improved, it pales in comparison to Iceland’s!  

Here, in Australia, eligible families can get 20 weeks of Parental Leave Pay at the weekly rate of the national minimum wage (which equates to $882.75 per week at the moment); and although there’s a plan to increase Parental Leave Pay to 26 weeks by 2026, we’ll still be getting around half the leave that Icelandic families enjoy.  

Of course, even great childcare systems do have their challenges.  

In Iceland, 96% of children aged three to five are enrolled in ECEC, however, they are struggling with a lack of childcare for ages 12 months to two years, after a big spike in births during the pandemic, and more ‘day-mothers’ (aka child-minders) and preschools are needed.  

Staffing can also be a problem at Icelandic preschools (sound familiar?), and The Guardian reports that there’s a lack of qualified early years teachers, because although pre-primary teachers earn one of the highest average salaries amongst rich countries, there’s still a feeling that wages are low, when you consider that preschool teachers go to university for five years.  

Canada is another cool country that’s becoming much more generous with its childcare.  

As part of its 2021 Budget, the Canadian government committed around A$30 billion over five years, plus more money after that, to improve the nation’s ECEC system. 

This spending is underpinned by a plan to drive economic growth, increase women’s workforce participation, and give every Canadian child the same, positive start.  

For families, this investment is incredible news, because it’s already cut average fees for regulated early learning and child care in half, and by 2026, the average Canadian childcare fee will be just $10 per day everywhere, except Quebec. 

And there’s no need to feel bad for Quebec!  

They’re excluded from these savings, because they already have a great thing going on.  

Back in 1997, this Canadian province introduced universal, $5-a-day childcare, and in 2020, families’ median fees for toddlers in childcare were approximately A$203 per month before subsidies in Quebec City, versus A$1,488 in Toronto.  

As well as saving families money, Quebec’s childcare system has also been great for women’s workforce participation.  

The Canadian government says, ‘Quebec women with children under three have some of the highest employment rates in the world’ – which wasn’t the case before 1997 – and they hope the current five-year plan has a positive impact for working mums all over Canada.  

The Canadian government is also focused on increasing the number of quality, affordable childcare spaces, and improving and expanding before and after school care to make things easier for working parents.  

It will be really interesting to see the effect that $10-a-day childcare has in Canada, and we’ll try not to be too jealous!  

After all, the world is a big place and there are lots of countries doing things better or worse than us. 

Australia was ranked 37th in UNICEF’s Where Do Rich Countries Stand on Childcare? June 2021 report, and although this result was a brit grim, considering there were only 41 countries in the list, we were ranked 12th for quality, and this is definitely important.  

Our affordability ranking of 34th was not so great, but when we fast-forward to July 2023, it is heartening to see the Australian government investing big bucks to make childcare more affordable for most families. 

Early learning definitely matters for under-fives, working parents, passionate educators and society as a whole; and UNICEF’s Too Little, Too Late report (released in 2023) emphasises how important it is for countries to spend more on children, and spend this public money earlier in their lives. 

This means Australia is on the right track, but there’s still much work to be done to ensure every child benefits from high quality ECEC.  

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission will hopefully provide some workable solutions when it releases its final report for the childcare inquiry, but for now, we’re in a situation where the early learning sector is highly valued in our minds, but not entirely supported on the ground.  

Problems like staffing shortages, childcare deserts and ever-rising fees aren’t going away on their own, and these things matter too.