A decade-long push to lift the quality of early learning in one of Sydney's most disadvantaged communities has produced a striking turnaround that advocates say should now shape national funding policy.
In a policy paper released on Monday, early childhood services in Mount Druitt said it raised National Quality Standard compliance from 43% in 2017 to 90% in 2026 alone.
The Hive, a United Way Australia initiative, is now calling for a national needs-based funding model for early learning modeled on the Gonski school funding formula.
National policy attention on early learning has centered on child safety in recent years, following a series of regulatory reforms to the National Law that took effect in stages between 2025 and early 2026. The Hive's paper argues that quality has been left out of that conversation, and that investment in one goal should not come at the expense of the other.
"The national conversation about early learning has focused on keeping children safe, and that focus is absolutely right. But safety and quality need different strategies, and you can't address one while leaving the other behind,” Laura Faraj, partnerships and policy lead at The Hive, said in a statement.
"Our work in Mount Druitt over the past decade proves that when services in disadvantaged communities are properly resourced, quality follows, and that makes children safer too."
Funding gap in disadvantaged communities
Mount Druitt is home to around 6,000 children aged 0-5, and roughly two in three children in the postcode are considered developmentally vulnerable starting school, compared with one in five across NSW.
The paper states quality ECEC costs more to deliver in disadvantaged communities, where services require higher staff-to-child ratios and greater administrative capacity. Current funding mechanisms, including the Child Care Subsidy, do not account for that gap, the paper noted.
Bernadette Reyes, director of Tregear Presbyterian Preschool in Mount Druitt, said her service costs around $200,000 a year more to run than an equivalent service in a wealthier area, in part because almost half the children in her care have additional needs.
"Families facing extreme financial stress cannot prioritize education if they cannot afford food or winter clothes. The preschool must step in to meet basic human needs so children can actually show up to learn," Reyes said.
National push for needs-based model
The Hive's call echoes a recommendation from the Productivity Commission's inquiry into universal early childhood education and care.
The Commission recommended the government establish an ECEC Inclusion Fund in 2026 to allocate needs-based funding to Child Care Subsidy-approved services based on children's inclusion needs. The report also recommended establishing an ECEC Commission to review regulatory arrangements and support workforce pay and professional development.
The 2026-27 federal budget allocated $54.8m toward the Inclusion Support Program, which supported more than 26,000 children in 2024-25, and $17.6m to expand the National Early Childhood Worker Register. The government also said it would work with states and territories on a potential national early education and care Commission, a recommendation from the Productivity Commission's 2024 report.
The Hive's paper positions Mount Druitt's trajectory as evidence that a similar needs-based model, if applied nationally, could lift quality outcomes in other disadvantaged communities.