At a time when the early childhood sector is being called upon to strengthen child safety, improve educational quality and create more inclusive environments, why are community preschools across NSW facing funding changes that could threaten their ability to do exactly that?
Today, Thursday 29 October 2026, preschool teachers, educators and supporters are gathering outside the offices of NSW Members of Parliament to protest the NSW Government’s new Universal Preschool Funding model.
While we cannot be there in person, we want to use our platform at Koori Curriculum to stand in solidarity with our colleagues, friends and the hundreds of community preschools across NSW who are deeply concerned about what these changes will mean for children, families, educators and communities.
We have spent years working alongside passionate early childhood professionals who dedicate themselves to providing exceptional education and care. We have witnessed firsthand the extraordinary work happening in community preschools, often well beyond what is required by legislation.
To now hear that some of these very services may be forced to reduce staffing, increase fees or potentially close their doors is heartbreaking. And quite frankly, we cannot believe that this is happening.
These Are Not Just Numbers, They Are Communities
Evans Head and Woodburn Preschool are longtime friends of Koori Curriculum and recipients of a Narragunnawali award.
They are a wonderful example of what can happen when educators invest in meaningful relationships, community connections, inclusive practice and a genuine commitment to reconciliation. Their work demonstrates that high-quality early childhood education is not simply about meeting minimum requirements. It is about creating environments where children are known, valued, supported and able to thrive.
Yet the preschool recently shared that, under the new funding arrangements, it anticipates losing approximately $142,000 annually in base funding, with potential additional losses of up to $250,000 annually through reduced Inclusion Support.
These are the service’s estimates, with the final inclusion funding impact still uncertain.In their public statement, the preschool shared: “We support affordable preschool. We support universal access. But affordability should never come at the expense of quality or child safety.”This is such an important distinction.
Nobody is arguing against making preschool more affordable or accessible. Universal access to high-quality early childhood education is something we should all be working towards. But access and quality cannot be treated as competing priorities. What is the point of making preschool more affordable if the very services providing that education are no longer financially able to maintain the staffing, relationships and programs that make them exceptional?
Evans Head and Woodburn Preschool have deliberately invested in staffing above minimum requirements because they understand that additional educators provide stronger supervision, more meaningful relationships and greater capacity to respond to children’s individual needs.
As they so powerfully stated: “Minimum staffing ratios are a legal baseline. They should never become the standard that preschools are financially forced towards.”
This is something every early childhood professional should be reflecting upon.
Fifty Years of Community Connections at Risk
Another dear friend of Koori Curriculum, Marnie, Director of Concord West Rhodes Preschool, has also spoken publicly about the devastating implications these funding changes could have for her service. Marnie has generously shared her knowledge and experience through our masterclasses and Educator Yarns book, and we have enormous respect for her commitment to high-quality, inclusive early childhood education.
For almost five decades, Concord West Rhodes Preschool has served its local community. Its educators have built relationships with generations of families, developed deep knowledge of their community and established a strong culture of inclusive practice. Some educators have worked at the service for more than three decades. Imagine the collective knowledge, professional experience, cultural understanding and relationships that exist within a team like that.
These are not things that can be easily replaced.
Marnie explained that approximately 90% of the preschool’s budget is spent on wages, reflecting its commitment to employing experienced, qualified educators and supporting consistent, high-quality practice. She fears that if the new funding model effectively supports only two educators per classroom, the preschool will struggle to sustain its current staffing arrangements.
For a service that currently employs four educators in each classroom, this represents an enormous financial challenge. Marnie has warned that the changes could ultimately threaten the preschool’s viability, potentially forcing its closure within the next two years. A community preschool that has spent almost 50 years educating children, supporting families and contributing to its local community is now questioning whether it can remain open.
And it is not alone.
The Bigger Picture Across NSW
The Independent Education Union of Australia NSW/ACT Branch has raised serious concerns about the new Universal Preschool Funding model and its potential impact on not-for-profit community preschools. According to the union’s media alert, preschool services across NSW are anticipating significant funding reductions.
The examples identified by the union include:
- Muswellbrook Preschool: estimated loss of $187,000.
- Byron Bay Preschool: estimated loss of $284,000.
- Cronulla Preschool: estimated loss of $201,000.
- Toormina Community Preschool: estimated loss of $174,000.
- East Maitland Preschool, Brunswick Street: estimated loss of $53,075.
These are projected losses reported by services and the union, rather than confirmed final funding outcomes. The union has also highlighted the broader consequences for the approximately 700 community preschools across NSW, which collectively educate almost 50,000 children. Behind every funding estimate is a service trying to work out how to maintain its workforce, support children with additional needs, keep fees affordable and remain financially viable.
For some, these decisions could have devastating consequences.
Child Safety Cannot Be Separated from Staffing
One of the things I find most difficult to reconcile is the timing of these changes. Across Australia, the early childhood sector is under increasing scrutiny regarding child safety. Educators and providers are being asked to strengthen supervision, improve safeguarding practices, develop more robust policies and ensure children’s wellbeing remains at the centre of every decision. These are important and necessary expectations. But we also need to acknowledge that quality and safety require investment.
Staffing above minimum ratios is not an indulgence. Experienced educators are not an unnecessary expense. Time for professional reflection, planning, relationship building and individualised support is not a luxury. These are essential ingredients of high-quality early childhood education. We cannot continue to increase expectations of educators while simultaneously reducing the financial capacity of services to meet those expectations.
And we certainly should not be creating conditions where preschools feel pressured to operate at minimum staffing levels simply to survive. Meeting the minimum legal requirement should never be confused with providing the best possible experience for children.
What About Inclusion and Equity?
At Koori Curriculum, we spend much of our time working with educators to strengthen inclusive practice, build meaningful relationships with Aboriginal communities and embed Aboriginal perspectives in ways that are authentic, respectful and sustained. We know that this work takes time.
It takes relationships. It takes professional learning, reflection, collaboration and genuine community engagement. These things cannot simply be squeezed into an already overstretched educator’s day. We are particularly concerned about what these funding changes could mean for children who already experience barriers to accessing early childhood education.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children with disability, children requiring additional learning support and families experiencing financial hardship, community preschools can play an incredibly important role. Many community-based services have spent decades building trust with families who may otherwise feel excluded from mainstream education settings.
Their knowledge of their communities, their relationships with local organisations and their capacity to respond flexibly to individual circumstances are tremendous strengths. What happens to this work when funding is reduced? What happens when additional educators can no longer be employed? What happens when services are forced to increase fees, reduce programs or limit the support they can provide?
And what happens to families when the community preschool they have trusted for generations is no longer there?
We cannot talk about educational equity without also talking about the funding required to achieve it.
We Should Be Investing in Excellence, Not Funding the Minimum
Something that continues to strike me throughout these conversations is that the services raising concerns are not asking for permission to do less. They are fighting for the ability to continue doing more. More individualised support. More meaningful engagement with families. More opportunities for children to learn through relationships, play and connection to community.More time to support educators to reflect, collaborate and develop their professional practice.
More capacity to respond to children with diverse learning needs. And more opportunities to build genuine, reciprocal relationships with Aboriginal communities. These are exactly the kinds of practices we should be celebrating and investing in. When we visit early childhood services through our work at Koori Curriculum, we often speak about the importance of moving beyond tokenism and compliance.
We encourage educators to ask themselves whether Aboriginal perspectives are genuinely embedded in their everyday pedagogy or simply represented through resources and displays. We talk about moving beyond the minimum. Yet how can we expect educators to deepen their practice if the financial conditions supporting that practice are being eroded?
Quality should not be something services have to fight to afford.
A Call to the NSW Government
We recognise the importance of the NSW Government’s commitment to universal preschool and affordable early childhood education. But a funding model must be judged not only by its intentions, but by its impact on the children, families, educators and communities it is designed to support. We urge the NSW Government to listen carefully to community preschools and the concerns being raised by their educators, directors and representative organisations.
We ask the government to meaningfully consult with the sector, review the projected financial impacts of the new funding arrangements and ensure that community preschools are not financially disadvantaged for investing in quality. We also ask that the importance of experienced educators, additional staffing, inclusive practice and longstanding community relationships be recognised within funding decisions.
Community preschools should not have to choose between keeping fees affordable and maintaining the quality of their educational programs. They should not have to choose between supporting children with additional needs and remaining financially viable. And they should certainly not have to choose between employing experienced educators and keeping their doors open.
To Our Community Preschool Colleagues: We Stand With You
To our friends at Evans Head and Woodburn Preschool, Marnie and the team at Concord West Rhodes Preschool, and the many other community preschools across NSW speaking out: we hear you.
We see the work you do. We know the care, dedication and commitment that goes into creating the environments you have built. We know that your educators are not simply names on a staffing roster. They are trusted relationships, familiar faces, knowledge holders, advocates and integral members of their communities.
We know that your preschools are so much more than buildings where children attend for a few hours each week. They are places of belonging. They are places where relationships are nurtured, identities are affirmed, and communities are strengthened. And they deserve to be protected.
While we cannot stand beside you physically at today’s rallies, please know that Koori Curriculum stands firmly in solidarity with you.We encourage our community of educators, families and early childhood advocates to listen to the concerns being raised, share the voices of affected preschools and call for a funding model that genuinely supports affordability, inclusion, safety and educational excellence.
Because our children deserve more than the minimum.
Our educators deserve more than the minimum.
And our community preschools deserve a future.
No cuts to NSW community preschool funding.
