The Victorian Government is reforming early learning, making it bigger, better and fairer. With new partnerships and record investment, all Victorian children can now get 2 years of Free Kinder.
Kinder helps develop children’s social, emotional and cognitive skills. It plays a big role in setting them up for life. Getting two years of that is better than one. Making it free helps everyone get those benefits.
But that’s just the start of the Best Start, Best Life reforms.
Over the next decade, Four-Year-Old Kindergarten will become Pre-Prep – doubling children’s play-based learning to 30 hours a week. At the same time, the roll-out of Three-Year Old Kindergarten will continue. By 2029, free kindergarten hours for 3-year-olds will increase from 5 to 15 hours a week.
We’re making sure there are enough kinders and early learning centres to make this possible. Across the state, we’re building, expanding and modernising kinders. And we’re making them more inclusive so that everyone can get the best start in life.
There are 3 ways that we’re doing this:
- We’re building kinders at new and existing schools
- We’re partnering with local government and the sector to build, expand and modernise kinders
- We’re building 50 government-owned and run centres.
Kinders at schools
New Victorian primary schools will have a kinder on-site or next door. We're also planning and building a pipeline of kindergartens at existing schools.
Early childhood grants
We run grants to fund early childhood building projects that make a big difference
50 early learning and childcare centres for Victoria
We're building 50 new early learning and childcare centres across Victoria
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