Page 637 - Week 02 - Thursday, 18 February 2016
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In 2012 states and territories and the commonwealth implemented the national quality framework for the education and care sector. The framework covers long day care centres, family day care, preschools and out of hours school care. It creates a framework of education and care for children from babies to five-year-olds who are not enrolled at school, and children up to the end of primary school who attend out of school hours care. The national quality framework established the education and care services national law and a uniform approach to the regulation and quality assessment of the education and care sector.
The framework contains four key components: a national regulatory framework for approving services, keeping children safe and maintaining minimum governance standards; a new national body, the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, ACECQA, responsible for establishing consistent and efficient procedures for the operation of the framework; a national quality standard with seven assessable quality areas containing a total of 58 elements; and a national quality rating and assessment process to complement the national quality standard.
The national quality framework is a transformational reform of the education and care sector. It is designed to challenge perceptions that child care is just paid babysitting, and instead puts into practice the evidence and research that tell us how the early years of life are so critical to the development of children from an educational, emotional and social perspective.
The national quality framework has taken the variety of laws and policies created by states and territories and created a uniform framework. But it is not a common denominator framework. It is aspirational. The NQF is essentially setting goals of quality and a framework to achieve those goals. These reforms are intended to be generational, bringing about changes not just over years but over decades.
Australia’s Education Council, representing all Australian jurisdictions, coordinates policy changes to the national quality framework. ACECQA leads the implementation of the framework, and states and territories regulate the sector under the national law.
In 2010 a baseline census of the ACT workforce was carried out prior to the framework. This was a census undertaken in the context of the then existing ACT laws. At that time the qualification requirements of educators in long day care and family day care were very different to what we have now under the framework. For long day care there was a percentage of staff who had to be diploma qualified, but the other staff did not need to be qualified at all. No qualifications were required for family day care, and for out of school hours care only one qualified staff member was required for every 33 children.
The national quality framework, as can be imagined, was a radical change for the ACT’s education and care sector. It sought to provide a one to four ratio for children under 24 months, a one to five ratio of educators for 24 to 36-month-old children, one to 11 for 36 months up to four-year-olds in childcare centres, and two to 25 for preschools. Also, for the first time it introduced ratios for family day care services.
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