Sept 20, 2013
Over the past 5 years the relative cost to households of ECE has gone up by 8.1%. But kindergartens account for almost all of the increase.
There has been a big increase in the cost of kindergarten fees relative to household earnings over the past 5 years of 64.4% or almost 13% per annum (between the June ’08 and June ’13 quarters). However this may be slowing down as over the past year the increase has been just 5%. Possible explanations for this are that:
- during this period of time we saw substantial numbers of kindergartens that had offered sessional / part-day preschool and asking for a parent donation being re-licensed as all-day services with ability to charge fees for childcare outside of 20 Hours ECE.
- kindergarten fee increases started from a traditionally very low base so even a small increase in terms of cents and dollars has seen a large increase in terms of percent figures.
Childcare centres have had a 2% increase in average fees relative to household earnings in the past 5 years – so only a very marginal increase on average for parents using a childcare centre. However, childcare fees have always been substantially higher than kindergarten and home-based fees so a tiny increase can still represent quite a few extra dollars for households.
Interestingly, home-based ECE has seen a decrease of 0.8% of average fees relative to household earnings over the past year, suggesting some room for negotiation by parents in fees!
