VIC comfortably leads national quality ratings with 95% meeting or exceeding NQF

Victoria continues to lead national National Quality Standard (NQS) ratings with 95 per cent of all services assessed as meeting or exceeding the standards according to the latest NQF Snapshot released by ACECQA. 

The state, which was the second to achieve the important milestone of 90 per cent of services rated meeting or better in the second quarter of 2022, has continued to build on its quality ratings performance consistently since then to reach current levels. 

Queensland, which was the first to reach 90 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, has not managed to match Victoria’s improvement over time and New South Wales, which moved through 90 per cent in Q1 2023 currently sits at 92 per cent. 

The three largest states from a total services perspective continue to exhibit overall quality ratings above their smaller peers however, the ACT and South Australia have materially higher overall percentages of services rated exceeding the NQS, although in the latter’s case the percentage has been falling. 

Of particular note from a jurisdiction perspective Western Australia has seen a very distinct reduction in the percentage of services rated exceeding with just 4 per cent now rated exceeding, down from 28 per cent back in 2017. 

It is important to stress that the reduction of exceeding centres has not translated to a big increase in centres rated working towards over the corresponding period. Instead the percentage of centres rated meeting has increased markedly from around 50 per cent five years ago to 78 per cent today. 

Overall however, quality levels as measured by the percentage of services meeting or exceeding the NQS across the early childhood education and care sector reached 91 per cent in the three months to September 2024, a new record.

Records were set across most governance types with for profit (98 per cent), private not for profit community (93 per cent), Council (95 per cent), State School (86 per cent) and Independent Schools (88 per cent) all reaching new records as did  long day care (90 per cent), outside school hours care (89 per cent) and family day care (73 per cent).

To review this latest quarter’s NQF snapshot click here.