Vorarlberg to review why few children use full-day care

Vorarlberg will examine how families use childcare after official figures showed that children there are much less likely to receive full-day care than in other Austrian states, ORF reported. The state’s overall childcare rate is above the national average, according to Statistics Austria.

Among children aged three to five, 96.2% in Vorarlberg attend childcare, compared with 94.5% across Austria. The rate for children under two is 37.4%, against a national average of 35.8%.

But just 13.4% of children in care in Vorarlberg are looked after for a full day, compared with 55.7% nationwide. State education councillor Barbara Schöbi-Fink said the figures were not contradictory, but showed the need to understand better how families use available services. She said families’ freedom to choose must remain the priority.

Since 2018-19, the childcare rate for children under two in Vorarlberg has risen from 26.5% to 37.4%. The state has 202 crèches and early-childhood care centres, 282 kindergartens, and 521 institutional childcare facilities in total, with 1,204 groups.

Schöbi-Fink said the expansion of services had been an important step and that the state now wanted to take families’ experiences into greater account.