Early Childhood Australia opens applications to present for 2025 National Conference

The Early Childhood Australia (ECA) National Conference is a feature event in the professional learning calendar, attracting delegates from across the country, and indeed internationally, to hear about innovation, best practice, and developments across the early childhood sector. 

In 2025 the 37th annual conference will be held from 1 – 4 October on Whadjuk Noongar Country (Perth, Western Australia) celebrating the theme ‘Universal not Uniform: Leading change, strengthening unity and honouring individuality’. 

The theme acknowledges that across Australia, early childhood education and care is the focus of policy analysis and debate, with reform agendas at both national and jurisdiction levels taking shape. 

At a time of such change, it is imperative that these reforms are informed by evidence and pay particular attention to strengthening equity – both in terms of access to early education but also outcomes for children and families who may otherwise be at risk of experiencing poor development, learning or wellbeing outcomes into their formal school years. 

There is also a need to ensure that these reforms are flexible to allow for contextualised solutions across jurisdictions and to meet the needs of all children and families.

Applications to present at the Conference, in line with the theme, are now open, with ECA inviting potential speakers and presenters to select from one of five areas of inquiry before the closing date of Friday 20 January 2025: 

1. Multiple literacies for children’s learning 
2. One workforce for young children 
3. Children at the centre of their own education journey 
4. Leadership: national initiatives, local solutions 
5. Supporting inclusion for regional, rural and remote

Presentations may be oral, a flash presentation, or a traditional poster presentation. At the time of application potential presenters must submit an abstract of 300 words online, and will be asked to identify the target audience for their presentation. 

The application process will ask about the experience of the presenter(s) and whether the content has been presented elsewhere. This information will help ECA balance the program with a mix of new and known material. It will also help ECA to meet its aim of delivering consistent, high-quality presentations and also of giving new or inexperienced presenters an opportunity to gain experience.

Applicants will also need to list the position and affiliation/organisation of each author, and provide biographies for each presenting author.

A condition for being able to present is that all presenters must register for the day on which they will be presenting at the conference. All presenters will receive the ECA Member rate for full conference registration. 

A maximum of three (3) presenters per paper will be allowed to register and participate at the Member rate. If registration confirmation and payment are not received by Monday 30 June 2025, abstracts will be withdrawn from the conference program.

To learn more about the process of submitting an abstract, please review the information available on the conference website. 

For any further support, please contact the ECA Conference and Events Team:

T: 02 6242 1800

E: [email protected]