Professional development
Quality
In The Field
QSP helps NSW services to improve and lift ratings to meeting or above
Freya Lucas
Dec 20, 2022
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The New South Wales Department of Education has used the end of the calendar year to reflect on the journeys of services participating in its popular Quality Support Program (QSP) which offers free professional development and tailored support to services seeking to improve their quality and compliance.
Delivered by the NSW Department of Education in partnership with the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), the QSP supports participating services to improve their understanding of the National Quality Standard (NQS) and improve the quality of their practice.Services participating in the QSP are more than twice as likely to achieve a rating of Meeting NQS or above compared to non-participating services with similar circumstances.
Since the program was first implemented in 2018, it has seen 73 per cent of the 588 participating long day care, family day care, preschool and outside school hours care services achieve a rating of Meeting or above following the completion of the program.
Participants are provided with resources focused on their needs and assigned a QSP support facilitator to answer questions, discuss improvement priorities, encourage critical reflection, and provide one-on-one tailored support.
96 per cent of participating services improved in the number of NQS elements ‘met’ by an average of 12 elements, leading to enhanced early learning environments and experiences for approximately 60,000 children across the state.
In 2022, the program was expanded to reach more early childhood education and care (ECEC) services with two support pathways introduced.
The three pathways of the Quality Support Program are:
- The Quality Support Pathway (QSP): a 14-week program which focuses on priority quality areas for each service, codesigning quality improvement practices to support services to meet and/or exceed the NQS. Services are able to register their interest in participating in this pathway.
- The Compliance Support Pathway (CSP): a 6-week program designed for services with identified compliance support needs who are referred to the program by the department.
- The State Regulated Service Support Pathway (SRS): A new 10-week tailored program is also available to State Regulated Services to assist them in aligning their operations with the National Quality Framework before their first Assessment and Rating.
For more information about the application process for each pathway or to register an interest in participating, visit ACECQA’s website.
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