The recent increase in child care rebate, has led many child care centres to increase their fees. My regular readers will be aware that my son recently started child care. He is two years old. My daughter also went through child care. Its around 3 years since my daughter left child care. In these three years, the fees have increased by around 26%. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that it is a huge increase. When I heard that some centres might raise fees again, I decided to do a quick research on child care fees…

Here are the important points from my research:

1. The child care fees is increasing at a rate faster than the inflation rate. How come? If the fees are being raised to cope with increase in expenses, should they only be raising with inflation - or at the most should only be marginally higher than inflation…

2. Government’s spending on child care care has increased by 4000 per cent in real terms since 1980.

3. Every time the Government announces a rebate or subsidy to the parents, the centres raise their fees - this defeats the entire purpose of Government’s rebates.

4. Some people are spending more on child care than on their rent.

5. Like teachers, child care staff are usually underpaid.

6. Fees have almost doubled in the past 6 years.

The government has to address the actual reasons the child care centres are raising fees. Rebates alone will not keep prices under check.

Do you have a child in child care and if so what are your thoughts about this?

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