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Goodstart Early Learning Red Hill secures 2024’s first Excellent award
Freya Lucas
Mar 04, 2024
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Goodstart Early Learning Red Hill has been awarded the Excellent rating by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), the first service to do so in 2024.
ACECQA praised the Queensland based service for its:
- commitment to children that respects, reflects and celebrates culture and diversity, including place of origin
- inclusive partnerships with children and families
- positive workplace culture and organisational values, sustained commitment to professional development and support of educators
First Nations communities
Red Hill’s commitment to respecting, understanding and embedding the culture and language of the Turrbal people was noted as an example of exceptional practice.
The service collaborated with an Indigenous Languages Researcher to learn more about the Turrbal language and used this to rename their green spaces. Red Hill notes that using Turrbal language helps to ensure that their respect for Indigenous culture is deeply embedded in the program and is not viewed as a separate learning experience.
Goodstart Early Learning Red Hill has expanded on this learning by installing a Sea of Hearts in the local community, a collaborative installation that is set up in a community garden and is made from blank hearts that are decorated by children, families and community members to reflect on the National Reconciliation Week theme for that year.
This initiative has been ongoing since 2021 and during this time the installation has had over 200 hearts contributed, making strong connections to the community and building awareness of First Nations histories and cultures.
Children’s Council
In 2022 the service developed a Children’s Council to support child engagement and empowerment. The Children’s Council are small meetings of three to four children where they share tea and discuss service topics and initiatives with the Educational Leader and Centre Director.
The responsibility of attending the Children’s Council is shared equally between all children and the meetings have the same agenda as staff meetings and parent meetings, which ensures that consistent conversations occur. So far, the Children’s Council has provided input on playground upgrades, rest time practices and implementing their bush kinder program.
Action research
The service engaged an action research model to reflect upon and change their approach to leadership. The action research occurred as a result of participating in a leadership program, From the Ground Up, and supported the service to develop a new distributed workflow which shared the responsibility for educational leadership between team leaders.
Invitation to Play
The service has established the Invitation to Play initiative where they open their service up to external educators so they can network, observe and learn new concepts. Beginning in 2021, Invitation to Play began as a workshop with 50 participants and has grown each year with over 100 participants attending each session now.
Learn more about the Excellent rating here. For more information about Goodstart Early Learning Red Hill please see here.
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