A network of sessional early educators says more consultation and funding is needed, warning the minimum 15 hours of free kindergarten rolling out across the state won’t suit everybody.
The Metropolitan Melbourne Community Kinder Network (MMCKN), which represents at least 25 sessional community kindergartens, said that while Victoria’s lauded $14 billion rollout – which will offer parents 15 hours of free kinder for three-year-olds, and between 15 and 30 hours for four-year-olds by 2029 – would be instrumental in children’s early learning, the one-size-fits-all model is impractical for some communities and schools.
A sessional community kindergarten is a part-time, teacher-led program for three and four-year-olds with fixed, short sessions during school terms. They are often not-for-profit and led by a community board, and may offer as little as five hours a week per program.
University of Melbourne’s Educational and Developmental Gains in Early Childhood (EDGE) Study, released in September, found children who receive two years of funded kindergarten were five months ahead in language development and two to three months ahead in memory and problem-solving skills by the time they started school compared with those who had a single year. The greatest benefits were among those who attended 15 hours a week.
Amy Merrick, president of the Chelsea Heights Kindergarten committee, said she started the MMCKN because she felt sessional kindergartens weren’t being represented.
“The community kinders that are around are very individual and different in terms of some of them are only one room, so it’s just literally not possible,” she said.
“We’re not going to get any more community kinders … We’ve got to keep the ones we have going because they are going to be shut down with these reforms.”
Merrick said some one-room services offering both three and four-year-old kinder would also require facility upgrades to offer more hours. Sessional kinders would also need funding for a full-time administration or operations position for continuity, governance and compliance support.
In metropolitan Melbourne, kindergartens can scale up to a maximum of 30 hours of free kindergarten a week by 2036. There is concern among some educators, however, that this could become a minimum requirement.
“I don’t think 30 hours a week is education. I think it’s care, but just sort of tarring every service with the same brush is just not appropriate, not sustainable,” she said, adding, “It turns qualified teachers into carers.”
Sophia Nardone said spending time and having adventures with her four-year-old son, Alessio, before he started school was an important reason she chose sessional kindergarten.
The mother-of-three currently works part-time and sees the benefits of having shorter days at kindergarten.
“It can be pretty taxing for the kids,” she said.
For families with a parent or carer working part-time or not in paid work, Nardone said fewer hours gave them the opportunity to have a free day together with their children and enjoy extracurricular activities.
“When they are at school, you don’t get that opportunity,” she said.
While attending kindergarten is not mandatory in Victoria, services failing to offer the minimum hours risk losing funding.
Cara Armstrong Kindergarten director and educational leader Ella Slattery said many services were already struggling to offer the 15 hours, and would struggle with further increases without having to reduce enrolments, combine ages or make changes to class sizes.
“It’s a fantastic idea, everyone is in support of it, but the implementation has to recognise the practical realities of delivering the reform,” she said.
Slattery said her Hawthorn East kindergarten runs the three-year-old program over two days, at 13.5 hours a week, and the four-year-old program over three days at 15 hours. They also offer an extended hours program that families can pay for.
Next year, they will increase their three-year-old hours to 15 per week.
“We were talking about family choice. It really is eliminating that choice. Some families that opt in to that community approach because they opt into that shorter approach,” she said.
She said there were about 13 sessional kindergartens in her council area of Boroondara that were single room.
“In terms of socio-economic scaling, there are communities that are really in need of new hours, but I don’t foresee how single-room not-for-profits will be able to sustainably move forward without some serious overhaul or serious funding from the government.”
Slattery said if her kindergarten scales up to 30 hours, they would have to look at splitting educators’ shifts.
“If we are expecting families to feel as though they have to access 30 hours of four-year-old kinder, that’s eliminating that choice for families,” she said.
“There are families who say three, four or five day programs are too much for their children,” she said.
“Eliminating the option for a two-day program is not in favour of their child.”
A Department of Education spokesperson said they valued the important role community kindergartens play in delivering quality services for their community, and worked closely with providers and local governments to understand demand and support access.
The 2026-27 state budget provides $548.3 million for early childhood education programs, infrastructure, and regulation.
Jane Austen, executive director of The Front Project, an independent early childhood organisation, said the EDGE study was a “promising sign that participation in high quality early childhood education and care can reduce inequality, giving every child a fairer start to school”.
“The evidence shows that children did best when they turned up consistently, for the funded hours, in a program run by experienced teachers, backed by a needs-based funding system,” she said.
Early Childhood Australia chief executive officer Samantha Page agreed, and said for more vulnerable children that extended to 30 hours.
“I think we can’t necessarily have unlimited flexibility. We need to have some guardrails around what public investment is used for. That includes quality regulation as well as minimum hours,” Page said.
Even with a parent at home, Page said, children learn in group settings and with families having fewer children, the opportunity to learn empathy, communication, co-operation and self-regulation alongside other children was important.
“You don’t want your children to miss out on that,” she said.
