Improving Australia’s quality rating and improvement systems for early childhood education and care

Abstract

Australia’s Productivity Commission report, A path to universal early childhood education and care (2024), recommended a review of the National Quality Framework for early childhood education and care (ECEC) and increased funding to support regulatory activity. Evidence underpinning the report identified an imperative to improve the frequency, fairness and focus of Australia’s quality assessment process and attendant value of ECEC service ratings. We interrogated the assessment process to identify methods for improvements. We focussed on observational assessment. This is the independent component of assessment and also the most predictive of child outcomes. We integrated large data and policy analyses with interview data from regulatory staff to ask: “How can observations be made most effectively, efficiently and equitably?” Our findings identified that focussing observations on standard and typical curricular activities that capture multiple quality elements provide new opportunity for fair and streamlined quality assessments and more meaningful ratings of ECEC services. Additionally, we found that regular and unannounced assessments improve assessment fidelity and have potential to engender friendly, collaborative quality improvement processes. The findings contribute to the international “second wave” of quality rating and improvement systems that streamline processes to focus on prediction of child outcomes and delivery of fair and frequent assessments.