WA election 2025: Roger Cook promises to make kindergarten full-time in State election push

Mums and dads have become the focus of the State election with Roger Cook promising to make kindergarten full-time for four-year-olds, as both parties vie for the parent vote. The $33.8 million plan to trial free kindy five days a week at 10 schools would be an Australian-first, aiming to end the juggle and cost that many parents currently face to split each week between school and daycare. The West Australian can reveal the 10 pilot locations would include five sites in regional WA and five in metropolitan Perth. “As a Dad from Kwinana, I know how important a good education is for our kids and the best education starts early,” the Premier said. “The current five-day kindy fortnight can be a nightmare for working parents, who are often spending hundreds of dollars a week on childcare to make up the difference. “This policy will save many working families literally thousands and thousands of dollars each year in childcare costs. It will help to get parents back into the workforce.” A phased Statewide roll-out is part of Labor’s pitch, but no time frame has been set. A Productivity Commission report last year was told that 27 per cent of WA children attempt multiple pre-school services in the year before full-time school, but that high quality early childhood education was not accessible, available or affordable for too many and warned that children were missing out on early learning. It found better early education could help more than 59,000 women return to work. “It’s good for household budgets, it’s good for our kids’ education and it’s good for the economy,” Mr Cook said. WA Labor’s pitch, set to be announced on Monday, includes funding for infrastructure, curriculum development and a new Office of Early Childhood Education. A re-elected Cook Government will also ask the Commonwealth, which currently chips in $190 million under the pre-school reform agreement, to boost its funding. The family vote has become a key target of the State election campaign, that kicks into high gear when the writs are issued this week. On Sunday, Labor announced another round of school assistance payments and pledged $38 million to expand free school breakfasts to five days a week at 650 schools. The Liberal Party revealed more detail of its $110 million plan to “revolutionise” early child health, including vouchers for glasses, $26 million to expand the Earbus program and $5 million to train GPs to diagnose ADHD. “I have families saying they’ve rung 30 plus paediatricians,” GP Andrew Leech said. “And the ripple effect is that any delay in their support or treatment or therapy or diagnosis leads to further deterioration, further worsening of their developmental condition, along with mental health. So we have to intervene.” But Mr Cook heaped doubt on the centrepiece of the Liberal policy, to trial speech pathology services in primary schools, insisting long wait lists won’t be solved by funding. “It’s not for a lack of money, it’s for a lack of workforce,” he said. Shadow early childhood learning minister Donna Faragher said the extra funding Labor promised, to hire more staff, still had not been fully rolled out. “I’ve called on them to actually bring that forward, bring on the 100 staff,” she said. “The advice that I have received talking to many people, including Speech Pathology Australia . . . they believe that there is capacity to do that. “Right now in metropolitan Perth, primary school aged children are waiting nearly two years to see a paediatrician, nearly two years to see a clinical psychologist and over 10 months to see a speech pathologist . . . that is not good enough.” Ms Faragher is not standing for re-election, but Liberal leader Libby Mettam vowed she would be both Premier and Health Minister, to oversee the rollout of the plan — if victorious on March 8.