Double Excellence: Byron Bay Preschool reflects on dual rating success

Byron Bay Preschool was established in the beautiful natural wonderland of the New South Wales Byron Shire in 1976. 

 

Since that time the team have ardently pursued high quality, a journey which was rewarded recently when both the Coogera and Cavanbah services were noted as being Excellent by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). 

 

We spoke with Director Bridget Isichei recently to learn more about the preschool’s success. 

 

The journey toward a double Excellent rating didn’t happen overnight, she began, sharing that perhaps the biggest contributor to the ratings was the introduction of a new approach to quality improvement across the organisation which is known as Critical Action Research (CAR).

 

CAR

 

“Instead of trying to use our Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) to do top-down quality improvement, each team began asking; ‘What is the most important thing we want to research and change?’,” she explained. 

 

For example- one year a team asked; ‘What really, will actually drive our children to become sustainable?’ another team decided to ask; ‘Are we really fully inclusive of every single family?’ 

 

“The leadership team formed a question each year in our leadership meetings, teachers formed one in their teachers’ meetings, and teams formulated a question in their room meetings,” Ms Isichei continued. 

 

“We found that Critical Action Research was most successful when teams found a question that really inspired them, or when the question was super relevant to their particular group of children.” 

 

The organisation ensured time was set aside for the CAR process to unfold in the calendar of each service, staff meetings and professional development days, and that time was budgeted for educators to come off the floor to work on researching/implementing and reflecting on new approaches. 

 

CAR has now been in place for three years and throughout the process Byron Bay Preschool has witnessed the organisation “transform on every level.”

 

Lifelong learning 

 

On a personal level Ms Isichei is driven by explorations of children’s citizenship and participation, and undertook her master’s thesis on effective strategies for increasing children’s ability to authentically participate in the Australian early childhood context as part of her leadership journey with Byron Bay Preschool. 

 

“A highlight for me was when this was turned into a Research in Practice Series (RIPS) with Early Childhood Australia (ECA),” she said. 

 

“Seeing work that I had spent so many years on going into print was really exciting. Alongside this project, our two centres utilised the learnings in the RIPS book and we have witnessed the outcomes for children when they have the opportunity to have agency, voice and influence in their program and communities.”

 

Watching the relationships between children and elderly people in the community through the Preschool’s extended intergenerational programs has been another highlight for Ms Isichei.

 

“For the older residents in our area that don’t have grandchildren nearby, having the opportunity to really get to know our children has been life changing,” she shared. 

 

“There is something that feels so right about intergenerational programs and it’s been heartwarming for all of us to watch how the programs have grown and flourished.”

 

Children are active participants in the life of the service 

 

One of the aspects noted by ACECQA in assessing each of the services as Excellent was the involvement of children in everything from risk management to program and practice. 

 

The foundations of this practice were set in place in 2020, when the service was reviewing its policies. 

 

“At that time, we were rethinking our sleep/rest, and nutrition policies- and the feedback we got from children is that they wanted to eat when they are hungry, and they didn’t like all resting at the same time,” Ms Isichei explained. 

 

Based on this feedback, the service redeveloped the relevant policies to prioritise children’s agency, and their ability to recognise their own tired/hunger cues. 

 

“We set up an area where children could get a bed out if they wanted to at any time, and an eating area where they could eat at any time they wanted,” she said. 

 

“At first, we had to support children to build competence to manage the different processes, but over time children just became competent and now staff do very little to support children with those routines. Staff may sit and interact, but children generally just get their food, find a friend to eat with, sit in the eating area, and put their food away, whenever they want throughout the day.”

 

Based on the success in this space, Byron Bay Preschool began to regularly look for ways to include the children in other routine administrative activities such as developing risk assessments. 

 

“Children now have a risk assessment book that is always accessible- if they see something happening that is dangerous or are worried about a spill on the floor- they can take a photo or draw it in their book,” she continued. 

 

“They come up with mitigation strategies together and present any recommendations to their friends at their morning meeting.”

 

For other services who may be interested in following suit, many of the strategies the service implemented are outlined in the last RIPS from ECA titled I have something to say.

 

Looking to the future

 

Not content to simply rest on the remarkable success of dual excellence, the team across both sites are looking to the future, and reflecting on how they can further support their community and grow their community support groups to include a wider range of families. 

 

“We are also just reopening a third preschool in a regional community about an hour and a half drive from our current services,” Ms Isichei shared. 

 

“This preschool was open for 47 years and closed last year. As it was the only preschool in the area, we decided to reopen it for the regional community now struggling to find access to quality early childhood education and care.”

 

Adding to the pool of specialised roles of cultural facilitator, forest preschool teacher and intergenerational facilitator already in play, Byron Bay Preschool is currently looking to expand its pool of specialised roles to include an additional needs facilitator and sustainability facilitator which will allow staff who are interested in these areas to grow in a career path that inspires them.

 

While many in the team “really can’t believe” their dual success, celebrations and congratulations are flowing for both teams. 

 

“We had a large number of families make videos and contribute to the process, so when we found out everyone was pretty elated,” Ms Isichei said.

 

For other teams who are considering pursuing an Excellent rating, her advice is not to be daunted by the size of the challenge. 

 

“It was such a big process- we had no idea how thorough and interactive the ACECQA team was when deciding the Excellent rating,” she said. 

 

“They really give you a chance to show every part of your practice, and no stone gets left unturned. We had no idea if we were going to get it or not- and it was quite a few months between when we first applied and when we got the two phone calls.”

 

Having gone through the process, she believes it is absolutely worth pursuing, despite the complexities. 

 

“There are a lot of amazing services out there, doing innovative things- and the process helps services identify and celebrate those great practices,” she said. 

 

“The process also gives the team something to work on that lifts them up and inspires them. I think in the current ECEC climate, where everyone is working so hard, often under difficult conditions, it’s really important to spend time reflecting on what is going well, and what a difference every one of us working in this sector is actually making for Australian children and families.”

 

The Sector extends its congratulations to the teams at Byron Bay Preschool on their recent success. 

 

To read about the Byron Bay Cavanbah site results, see here, and for the story of Byron Bay Coogera, see here. 

Information about the Excellent rating, how to apply, and other hints and tips is available on the ACECQA website.