The Andrews Labor Government is giving Victorian kindergartens a boost by making more funding available for services to upgrade and improve, ensuring every Victorian child has the best start in life.
Minister for Early Childhood Ingrid Stitt today announced a further boost to the Labor Government’s Building Blocks ‘Improvement’ stream grants – supporting upgrades and minor expansions to early learning facilities, or investment in IT equipment to deliver interactive early learning experiences.
The additional funding will ensure services across the state can provide a first-class learning environment and support the statewide delivery of the Labor Government’s Three-Year-Old Kindergarten, which has now rolled out statewide.
Early learning facilities can now apply for grants of up to $500,000, an increase of $200,000, for upgrade projects including renovation and refurbishment.
The Government has also increased grants for minor infrastructure projects to improve the quality of services for families and kids to $70,000, up by $20,000, and grants for IT devices like laptops, tablets and televisions to support learning to $2,000 – an increase of $500.
In an Australian-first, the Labor Government is investing almost $5 billion over this decade to deliver a full 15 hours per week of universally funded Three-Year-Old Kindergarten.
The Building Blocks grants program helps improve kindergarten infrastructure in Victoria and is essential in the successful statewide roll-out of Three-Year-Old Kindergarten, which will continue scaling up to deliver 15 hours of funded three-year-old kindergarten programs to children by 2029.
As part of the roll-out, the Government is upgrading infrastructure through a $1.68 billion co-investment with the early childhood sector to build and expand kindergarten facilities in every corner of the state.
The Building Blocks Planning stream, which is open until 20 March, will fund planning and pre-construction work on kindergarten projects that support Three-Year-Old Kindergarten.
To apply for a Building Blocks grant visit .
As stated by Minister for Early Childhood Ingrid Stitt
“We want every Victorian child to have the best start in life – and that’s why we’ll keep backing early childhood services through unprecedented investment and world-class early learning initiatives.”
“Boosting our Building Blocks grants will help local councils and early childhood services across Victoria improve their kindergartens, deliver better learning experiences and help set our kids up for the future.”
