EXCERPTS:
An uneven spread of child care and kindergarten services in Brisbane is causing anguish for parents and business owners alike, with some centres hopelessly oversubscribed while others struggle to survive.
In Bulimba on Sunday dozens of parents were queued up from before dawn in an effort to get their children a berth at a local kindergarten for 2014.
Meanwhile, in other suburbs, early learning and day care businesses are struggling to survive because of competition against state-built centres they say weren't needed.
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Critics have blamed poor analysis and political interference with creating a problem they say could have been avoided.
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Starting from scratch
After its re-election in 2009, the Bligh government sought to increase participation of the state's 53,000 kindy-age children in some form of early learning program from 29 per cent in 2007 - the lowest in the country - to 100 per cent (or "universal access") by 2014.
Since then, they've built 102 new state-owned kindergartens, out of 240 originally promised by 2014.
By 2011, the government announced that it had exceeded its targets, with 69 per cent of four-year-olds already enrolled in an early education program delivered by a qualified teacher.
But it's where they've been built that is causing dramas for parents, with critics of the program - and even some beneficiaries - pointing to glaring inefficiencies.
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Numbers game
In planning the rollout of new services, the state government said it relied upon a combination of 2006 census data and Office for Economic and Statistical research, which estimated the population of four-year-olds in a statistical local area.
It also used vacancy rate data from the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations.
However, despite multiple requests, the department declined to provide brisbanetimes.com.au with the exact data it used to calculate vacancy trends.
Meanwhile, Childcare Queensland - an umbrella body for many of the state's privately run long day care centres - provided its own research that suggested vast disparities in the vacancy rates of centres across Queensland.
An acute example was in Cairns, where the group's research - relying on respondents to an annual survey - showed at least 470 vacancies per week.
"We're just surviving," said a spokeswoman for the private Sunshine Child Care and Learning Centre in Aeroglen, who gave her name only as Dawn.
"We have 72 per cent occupancy. But Cairns is not a very big area."
A spokesman for Childcare Queensland, Peter Price, said the group initially welcomed the government plan to improve access to early childhood education in Queensland.
"We thought, this is great because in all the areas of need there will be more (centres) being built," Mr Price said, adding that politics could have played a part in decision-making.
"Politicians lobby, particularly with a state election coming up. (And) they don't look at the reality.
"And you get silly situations where there are a lot of vacancies and the government announces that they're going to build a centre.
"It's another ABC debacle all over again, essentially," Mr Price said, a reference to the collapsed child care group run by entrepreneur Eddy Groves.
Child care Queensland's president, Gwynn Bridge, warned in 2008 of the impact of the new centres on existing services, writing in an editorial on the Care For Kids website that, "should these centres begin to appear in areas where services are experiencing low occupancy rates, it is a concern that we will see market failure of existing services. Already some state/territory governments are building early learning services next door to or in close proximity to existing services."
Graham Sagar, the group's treasurer and himself a centre operator, agreed that while investment in child care was to be encouraged, poor planning posed risks to existing services.
"If an area needs a centre and doesn't get one, that's an issue. What's a bigger issue is if an area doesn't need a centre and the state government decides to put one there."
-reprinted from the Brisbane Times