Child Care Needs Building Blocks Not Stumbling Blocks

The National Quality Framework for Early Education and Care

In December 2007 the Commonwealth, state and territory governments agreed to the development of an agenda designed to significantly reform the areas of education, skills and early childhood development in Australia.

The National Quality Framework for Early Education and Care: A discussion paper, the document arising from this agreement was released last month along with a call for public submissions on the proposed national quality framework and the national early years learning framework.

The Government says that the introduction of a national quality framework will provide parents, communities and operators of early childhood education and care services with a nationally consistent, streamlined and integrated licensing and accreditation system which ensures quality standards are implemented and maintained across all services.

The discussion paper covers issues such as:

What are appropriate quality standards for early childhood education and care?
How should service quality be rated?
How can we improve the current licensing and accreditation arrangements for the early childhood education and care sector?
How do we develop the workforce for a new quality early childhood education and care system?
What do we want children to know, understand and be able to do?
What are the most effective ways for educators to optimise children’s learning and development?

The Government’s proposed Early Years Learning Framework will be linked to the national quality standards and will underpin the early childhood education and care agenda. The Government says the framework will be used to guide early childhood educators in the development of quality early childhood programs.

The Government is now seeking input from people and organisations on the issues listed above and the document more widely in an effort to ensure the resultant reforms will support the development of an efficient and effective early childhood education and care sector.

Written submissions
People and/or organisations interested in making a written submission may do so by emailing ECECQualityReformSubmissions@deewr.gov.au. Written submissions can take the form of a simple email expressing the author/organisation’s opinion on the paper, or they can use the template submission form in Appendix A of the discussion paper.

Public consultation sessions
The Government ran a series of public consultation sessions around the country in August and September 2008. These sessions were designed to promote discussion and debate about the main issues raised in the discussion paper. For more information about these sessions click here or call 1800 220 425.

Focus groups
The Government will also run a series of focus groups with families currently using early childhood and care services. The purpose of these sessions is to provide the Government with detailed information about the varying needs and priorities of different families using the services already available.

Families are also encouraged to make written submissions on the proposed reforms and are welcome to attend the public consultation sessions.

Focus groups and consultations targeting specific stakeholders may also be held if it is deemed necessary and helpful.

Feedback from the consultation process will be used to produce the National Quality Framework and the Government plans to release a draft of the national quality standards and rating system later in the year.

Following national endorsement, the final framework is expected to be introduced from 1 July 2009.

If you would like to join the discussion group on this very topic click here