Professional learning partnership boosts quality in NSW

Freya Lucas

May 19, 2022

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A professional learning partnership between ACECQA and the NSW Department of Education is supporting services to support the ongoing quality improvement of eligible children’s education and care services in NSW rated as Working Towards the National Quality Standard (NQS) and/or with identified compliance support needs.

The Quality Support Program, Dual Program Pathways aims to enhance participating services’ capacity and capability in delivering quality children’s education and care by boosting participants’ knowledge of the NQS and their confidence in interacting with them.

The program will also support service compliance with the National Quality Framework (NQF), including quality practices and/or regulatory standards, good practice leadership, management, and governance.

Professional learning is delivered by ACECQA, and each service is allocated an experienced and dedicated support facilitator who will work alongside service leaders to coach and guide them through the improvement process.

This support may look like face-to-face, online and telephone coaching support, online learning modules and workshops and other informative resources to support quality outcomes for children and each unique service context.

The Quality Support Program, Dual Program Pathways will commence in July 2022 for a period of 12 months. Eligible children’s education and care services can apply to participate now.

The Dual Pathways Program consists of two new support pathways:

The Quality Support Pathway is a 14-week program supporting eligible children’s education and care services located in NSW with a current rating of Working Towards NQS. This Pathway supports services’ ability to meet and/or exceed the NQS and will focus on priority quality areas. ACECQA will work alongside service leaders to continue building knowledge of the NQS, co-design quality improvements and support ongoing confidence with embedding quality practices, with the goal being quality outcomes for children.

ACECQA is currently seeking expressions of interest to participate in the Quality Support Pathway.

The Compliance Support Pathway is a six-week program supporting children’s education and care services with identified compliance support needs. The Compliance Support Pathway will help services to understand the root cause of non-compliance instances and to co-design implementation plans, processes and management systems that support children’s health and safety as well as governance and leadership.

In doing so, this pathway aims to build participants’ capabilities to ensure a sustained approach to compliance that will result in better outcomes for children, services and providers.This pathway is by direct referral only. Services participating in this pathway will be directly referred into the pathway by the NSW Department of Education. The Department will refer services by using regulatory data that highlights a need for improvement in the areas of children’s health and safety and governance and leadership. Eligibility criteria - Quality Support Pathway

The Quality Support Pathway is being offered to approved children’s education and care services including early childhood, family day care, preschools and outside school hours care services including vacation care services that meet the following criteria:

located in NSW
are currently rated Working Towards NQS.

Priority will be given to services with six or more elements of the NQS rated as ‘Not Met’. Consideration will also be given:

based on the number of elements rated ‘Not Met’
to services in more disadvantaged areas
to services rated Working Towards NQS for a period of longer than four years and/or have received this rating twice or more.

Eligibility criteria - Compliance Support Pathway

Participation in the Compliance Support Pathway is by direct referral from the NSW Department of Education. The Department will refer services by using regulatory data that highlights a need for improvement in the areas of children’s health and safety and governance and leadership.

To register an expression of interest for participation in the Quality Support Pathway, please see here. Please note: providers with several services who would like more than one service to participate should complete a separate registration for each service.

For any questions about the Dual Program Pathways, please contact ACECQA’s Dual Program Pathways team at qualitysupportprogram@acecqa.gov.au or phone 02 8240 4255.

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