Understanding the impact of increased hours for three and four-year-old kindergarten

SocioLogic has supported over 25 local governments to update their Kindergarten Infrastructure and Service Plans since 2020. We provide a comprehensive model of supply and demand that allows every LGA to determine their own unmet demand figures using their preferred datasets, growth assumptions and policy parameters.

We maintain a very positive working relationship with both the Department of Education and local councils, ensuring that all KISPs we support achieve final endorsement by Council. Our role typically includes:

• Interpreting and validating the Department’s modelling methodology

• Integrating council-specific intelligence and service insights into the KISP

• Conducting sensitivity testing to confirm the accuracy and reliability of unmet demand forecasts

In addition, SocioLogic prepare or contribute to the ‘Local Context’ section of KISPs, develop population midpoints for custom catchments, and extend the modelling to include childcare (long day care) alongside kindergarten demand.

advanced supply and demand modelling

SocioLogic has developed a comprehensive data model in discussion with the Department of Education and 25 metropolitan and regional councils across Victoria. The model allows councils to get ‘under the hood’ of their KISP data, run their own supply and demand analysis based on preferred population forecasts and geographies, assumptions and other modelling parameters, and to increase demand for four-year-olds from 15 hours to 30 hours per week.

The model has been instrumental in identifying areas of disagreement between the KISP and council’s own understanding of supply and demand, and showing the significant increase in infrastructure that will be required to service the Government’s latest commitments.

Councils use our model to:

• View when and where kindergarten and childcare shortfalls or surpluses exist across a municipality, for the total period of council’s population forecasts;

• Directly compare results for SA2 areas using State Government ‘Victoria in Future’ projections with councils’ preferred population forecasts (such as Forecast ID by ID Consulting);

• Inform discussion with the Department of Education regarding the KISP by showing clearly where differences in data, assumptions or modelling preferences exist;

• Understand the impacts of the rollout of kindergarten for three-year-olds and funding for 30 hours ‘pre-prep’ education for four-year-olds;

• Inform long-term planning for kindergarten services and infrastructure.

Example 1: compare the impact of 30 hours per week for four-year-olds compared with the adopted KISP (15 hours per week)

Example 2: visualise the impact of increases to three-year-old and four-year-old kindergarten using Council’s adopted population forecasts: