Decades of research, including AERO’s own, show that quality early learning profoundly shapes children’s development, learning, and life outcomes.
When children miss out on quality early childhood education and care (ECEC), it’s not just inconvenient; it deepens disadvantage and limits potential from the start.
At the recent Early Childhood Australia (ECA) Conference in Perth, AERO's Rowena Shirtcliff and ECA's Dr Sarah Wight ECA explored this complex challenge.
This article summarises themes from their co-presentation, and references findings from AERO’s Delivery approaches in regional and remote thin markets research report, released in February 2025.
What the evidence shows
‘Thin markets’ are areas underserved or unserved by ECEC services, arising from inadequate provision to certain cohorts or regions, as defined by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC). ‘Access’ refers to the availability of a place in a children’s education and care service.
In exploring delivery models for ECEC in regional and remote thin markets, AERO set out to identify which approaches genuinely improve access by examining evidence from both Australia and internationally. We identified eight approaches with either promising or emerging evidence for improving access.
The research findings reaffirmed what many in the sector have long understood: high operational costs, workforce shortages, and infrastructure gaps are major barriers to accessing early childhood education and care. These issues also rarely exist in isolation – more often, they intersect and intensify, creating compounded challenges for communities.
Promising approaches
Four approaches stood out for their strong evidence base:
- Government provision interventions: Where the government plays an active role in planning, contracting or partnering with others. Success with this approach requires accurate and timely data.
- Government funding interventions: Including targeted supplementary operational funding and establishment grants. Establishment grants must also account for ongoing operational costs from the outset.
- Home-based delivery: Typically delivered in either the child’s or educator’s home and usually involving smaller groups of children. Structural supports like educator training, regulation, and professional development are essential to maintain quality.
- Delivery through a school: Typically including delivery through school systems or through school councils or parents and citizens associations. This approach requires careful attention to age-appropriate pedagogy and curriculum tailored to young children.
Emerging approaches
Four other approaches showed promise, but warrant careful consideration:
- Online delivery: Consisting of early learning programs delivered to children remotely. This approach does require reliable internet access, though – a challenge in many remote areas.
- Mobile delivery: Services where educators or teachers visit multiple locations to provide education programs.
- Employer-supported delivery: Services located at or near workplaces, with support or funding provided by employers, where businesses are willing to engage and collaborate.
- Delivery in nature: The service is delivered in nature for some or all of the time. These services typically require additional training and smaller educator-to-child ratios than other alternatives.
Insights from the communities
Complementary to this research, Early Childhood Australia (ECA) undertook consultations with key stakeholders with knowledge of, and interest in, early childhood education and care provision for persistently 'unserved' and 'underserved' children, families and communities.
The consultations confirmed that consistent, affordable, accessible and high-quality early childhood education and care is a clear priority. However, community needs vary significantly from one place to another, making community needs analysis essential. High-level modelling and analysis alone often miss the nuance of what actual provision looks like and what families and communities need. What works in one community may not see strong uptake in another. For example, one community might support three-day-a-week programs with longer days, while another may require five days a week but shorter operating hours.
Throughout ECA’s engagement with stakeholders, ECA heard strong demand for small, centre-based services that, where possible, integrate with schools and strengthen the early learning ecosystem. A particularly significant need emerged around birth-to-three education and care. Even in areas where strong preschool provision existed, stakeholders consistently described this gap as impacting young children's opportunities to engage in quality ECEC experiences.
The flow-on effects for families and communities were substantial. Parents and carers face real barriers to returning to employment, study, and training. ECA heard from communities about education, health, and allied health professionals unable to resume their roles. Similarly, parents – particularly mothers – working in family and community services, agriculture, and various other sectors within regional, rural, and remote communities were unable to return to work. This creates workforce gaps and shortages that impact the broader community.
Breaking the access-uptake cycle
Even when services exist, families often face barriers to accessing them. In regional and remote areas, these barriers are often more persistent than in urban areas. A result is often lower enrolments and inconsistent attendance. This creates a reinforcing cycle: barriers to uptake artificially deflate demand, which threatens service viability and quality, which reduces availability, which further limits access.
Three key takeaways
Based on the research and insights from stakeholder conversations, three things become apparent:
- Quality is non-negotiable: Improved access alone is not enough by itself. To deliver on universal provision and genuinely address disadvantage, children need access to high-quality ECEC, that keeps children safe and attends to children’s rights and their best interests.
- Success requires specific preconditions: Regardless of which delivery model is chosen, certain elements must be in place: sustainable funding that covers genuine costs and addresses additional cost of delivery for regional, rural and remote communities, a qualified, capable and sustained workforce, and authentic community engagement as part of careful mapping of the ECEC ecosystem and family and community need.
- No single solution exists: The challenge is too complex and varied across regional, rural and remote Australia to have one answer. The solution lies in carefully tailored combinations of approaches that respond to local needs, but does not compromise on quality, children's safety and safeguarding.
Moving forward
A significant policy opportunity currently exists, where we see greater investment of Australian governments with further changes in policy, funding and regulatory settings likely. Innovation is happening in communities across the country, demonstrating what is possible even within current constraints. A challenge exists to carefully map the complete provision in communities, understand what each community genuinely needs, and design responsive solutions within these policy and funding settings, considering where flexibility could be applied for these persistently unserved and underserved communities. Ongoing evaluation – through monitoring and research into the implementation of innovative and adapted approaches – will strengthen the evidence base around what works.
Innovation is taking place where some providers are working with communities to co-design bespoke solutions to address barriers to provision, and applying government and other funding sources. Questions around whether such solutions may be applied at scale are of interest to the early childhood sector. There are learnings from quality providers who are designing and delivering programs that are deeply contextualised – created with and for their communities – ensuring children and families have access to early learning where few options may exist.
As stakeholders shared with us following the presentation at ECA’s National Conference in Perth, what matters is addressing persistent barriers to provision and delivery, and working to realise the promise of a tailored, responsive approach that genuinely reflects community needs. Regional, rural and remote communities aren't peripheral to Australia's early childhood story, they're central to it.