The latest report on standards of children’s education and care services shows that more than half of all currently assessed and rated services are meeting or exceeding Australia’s new quality standards. More than 1,000 services were added in the three months to June, with 19% of services so far assessed and rated.
It is the second quarterly report from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) on the national quality ratings. The ratings are based on socio-economic disadvantage and remoteness, and information on waivers.
ACECQA Board Chair Rachel Hunter said the figures in the latest report largely mirrored the spread of quality ratings shown in the report released earlier in the year.
“About 56% of assessed and rated services continue to meet or exceed the National Quality Standard,” Ms Hunter said.
“The National Quality Standard was introduced to raise the bar on quality for children’s education and care services and families can feel confident about the high level of education and care seen across services.”
Other highlights from the report include:
- early figures show services in the most disadvantaged areas of Australia are just as likely to be rated ‘Exceeding’ as those in areas of greatest social advantage
- services are more likely achieve a rating of ‘Exceeding’ in the standards related to relationships with children and partnerships with familes and communities, and
- the number of approved family day care services has increased by 15% in the three months to end of June.
“For services rated to date there is no clear pattern emerging between socio-economic advantage and quality,” she said.
“Services in disadvantaged areas are just as likely to meet or exceed the standards as those services in more advantaged areas.”
Ms Hunter said the small number of services rated in remote and very remote areas made it difficult to compare services by remoteness, but at this stage it appeared that remoteness may have very little effect on the spread of ratings.
Information on the number of services with waivers – exemptions from certain physical environment and staffing requirements in the Education and Care Services National Regulations – is also in the report.
“Waivers play an important role in helping service providers maintain their level of service to families while adjusting to the national quality framework or dealing with unexpected events,” Ms Hunter said.
“Less than 5% of services have some type of waiver to help them meet the regulations and the great majority are temporary waivers granted by the authority under a clear expectation that the present difficulty will be overcome.”
Ms Hunter said all children’s education and care services will be quality assessed and rated over time and new ratings were being added to national registers every week.
“Families can check the registers to find out the ratings of services that have been assessed in their area,” she said.
“All services that have been assessed and rated are also required to display their ratings on site.
Ms Hunter said families who want more information about quality ratings and what they mean for their child should talk to their service.
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Check out the Q2 2013 report at www.acecqa.gov.au/national-quality-framework.
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