Xplor Education’s innovative approach to kindergarten funding better accommodates change

Recent changes to kindergarten and preschool funding underscore the critical role that kindergarten and preschool programs play in the Early Education and Care (ECEC) sector.

Individual states offering increased funding for kindergarten and preschool programs demonstrates a commitment to supporting growing families and the pressures they face in terms of cost of living. These changes help ensure all children have access to quality early learning, regardless of background. But with each state implementing different funding and methods of allocating free relief to families, managing these funding programs can be challenging for services, especially if your childcare software platform is slow to adapt to change.

Moving with purpose to make life simple

Two of Xplor Education’s guiding values are to move with purpose and make life simple. Proactively working with the Department of Education and the state government resulted in Xplor Education being one of the first childcare software providers to submit QLD Kinder Acquittals for Term 1 in 2024.

This work continues with updates in Xplor Education’s admin platform, Office, to support:

• Start Strong in NSW
• Free Kinder in VIC
• Free Preschool in ACT
• Free Kindy in QLD

Regular meetings with the Departments of Education in VIC, NSW, ACT and QLD enable regular collaboration, helping drive timely platform integration. 

The goal is to provide customers with the necessary tools to efficiently manage kindergarten and preschool funding programs while navigating the ongoing changes as smoothly as possible.

How Xplor Education helps you manage your kindergarten and preschool funding

Faced with deciding how to best build tools to implement the various state kindergarten and preschool funding programs, Xplor Education opted to focus on the commonalities between each state’s requirements. The team examined similarities in how programs are managed, how bookings and attendances are captured and how fee relief is allocated. 

The result? A flexible tool that allows for the capture of required state-specific data fields for children, along with state-specific reporting requirements in each state. This approach has several benefits, including:

• A unified user experience—The tool for NSW, VIC and ACT uses similar flows, enabling users across states to easily configure and manage programs, funding allocation and reporting requirements.
• Time to market—By building the tool this way, Xplor Education can quickly roll out changes to customers, resulting in less time spent waiting for updates, a key factor considering government requirements often change.
• Learnings from one state apply to others—As updates are rolled out for individual states, they become available to others. For example, once the feature to reverse payments was built for one state, it was quickly rolled out across NSW, VIC and ACT.

In addition, Xplor Education’s easy-to-use admin platform, Office, boasts several features to help services manage kindergarten and preschool funding efficiently and effectively.

• The State Kinder Funding tab on each child’s profile enables easy data and evidence management.
• Automated systems in Office help save you time with the platform being integrated with the respective state government databases for data submission.
• Customers have the option to turn on automatic or manual allocations (for some states), enabling them to manage their funding in a way that works for them.

Regardless of which state you’re in or how you want to manage your funding allocation, Xplor Education enables you to handle things your way.

Xplor Education’s Playground also supports kindergarten and preschool programs

In addition to funding support, Xplor Education’s educator platform, Playground, helps kindergarten and preschool programs run efficiently while improving learning experiences, compliance and communication.

Playground is a platform where educators can do all their programming and planning in one convenient place using various features, including Documents, Tables and Canvas. It makes it easy for educators to document observations, track milestones and create reflections. All of these are stored securely in the cloud for convenient access and can easily be shared with families in the Home family app.

Educators can quickly and conveniently track learning outcomes against the Early Year Learning Framework (EYLF). State-specific and custom frameworks can also be added to meet the needs of your kindergarten or preschool program. Cloud-based storage ensures your documentation is secure but also conveniently accessible for assessment and ratings.

Sharing photos, videos and other updates via Posts helps boost family engagement. Digital portfolios allow guardians to see their child’s learning journey, helping ensure they never miss a moment. Messenger also provides secure messaging between educators and guardians throughout the day. 

Xplor provides ongoing support for kindergarten and preschool programs

Xplor Education’s knowledgeable and friendly training team (many with sector experience) recently conducted webinars to guide customers on how to best set up their kindergarten and preschool funding programs in Office. For a first-hand look at how straightforward kindergarten and preschool funding setup is and how efficient program management is, please visit this page to view recordings on various kindergarten and preschool programs, including:

• New South Wales—Start Strong
• Victoria—Free Kinder
• Australian Capital Territory—Free Preschool

Please visit this page for more information or a personalised demo on how Xplor Education supports kindergarten and preschool funding and programs.