ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a short summary of the Australian early childhood education and care. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, parallel systems of education and care developed across Australia. In the late 1980s, the privatization of the early childhood sector continued with lobbying by private providers to amend the Child Care Act to allow subsidies to be paid to users of for-profit as well as non-profit childcare centers. The Community Child Care Co-Operative in New South Wales argued that the profits of ABC Learning were created from inequitable low staff wages and cost-cutting, both linked to the quality of early childhood education and care. Many countries, like Australia, are dedicated to improving the provision of early childhood education and care for children and their families. Many developed countries have a shared focus of providing universal access, learning programs, access and affordability. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
