Quality Early Education for All

administering the National Quality Framework. Each state or territory is responsible for monitoring and assessing
the quality of services within their jurisdiction and reporting this information to ACECQA. These state and territory
regulatory agencies are generally located within departments of education, who also grant service and provider
approvals, record and investigate incidents and complaints, and ensure ECEC services meet legislative
requirements.
Additionally, states and territories fund and manage preschool programs, including those delivered within
childcare service settings, or directly provide preschool programs and other programs themselves. Some states
and territories offer funded access to an additional year of preschool for very vulnerable children and targeted
cohorts such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
Implementation progress and outcomes
Given the early stage of the NQF’s implementation, its impact on children’s development and academic
performance over the course of their schooling and later health, economic and social outcomes, is not yet known
(AIHW, 2015). The NQF has largely achieved its primary goals of lower ratios and better-qualified staff with the
final tranche of ratio changes delivered in 2016. Requirements for early childhood teachers (ECTs) in childcare
centres have largely been implemented, with at least one bachelor-qualified teacher, especially in the ‘preschool
room’ of their service, although many educators and early childhood teachers are still ‘working towards’ their
qualification.
The significant change and upskill of the workforce necessary for full implementation of the NQS has required a
phased implementation approach. The final implementation is scheduled for 2020 with the introduction of a
second ECT from 1 January 2020.
Implementation of the standards has, however, been uneven and is not yet complete:
• Only 74 per cent of Australia’s 15,166 ECEC services have been visited and rated by ACECQA, with 3905
services yet to receive a rating (Figure 2).
• Fourteen per cent (367) of preschools across Australia received a Working Towards rating when they were
assessed against the National Quality Standards, an improvement on the previous three years.
• Of all services that have received a rating, 68 per cent were rated overall as meeting or exceeding the
National Quality Standard (ACECQA, 2016b).
• Services that rated as Working Towards the NQS or requiring Significant Improvement are disproportionately
located in areas of concentrated disadvantage (Cloney et al, 2015; ACECQA 2016b; Lamb et al, 2015).
• Only 44 out of 11,261 services have received an Excellent rating. 8
• There was only a 3 per cent increase in services meeting or exceeding the NQS between 2014 and 2015.
• While 85 per cent of preschools met or exceeded the NQS, only 65 per cent of long daycare services, and only
54 per cent of family day care services did.
• ACECQA report that 440 services have been rated more than once, with just under half of these moving from
‘working towards’ to ‘meeting’ the NQS and the remainder moving from ‘meeting’ to ‘exceeding’ the NQS
(ACECQA, 2016b).
There were also differences between states, with a majority of services in Western Australia, Tasmania, the
Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory rated as ‘working towards’ the NQS. These results are not
unexpected given that, prior to the introduction of the national system, some service types had not previously
been regulated against a regime of quality standards. Recent research confirms that there are fewer services
8 This may reflect the fact that ‘excellent’ ratings have an additional application and assessment process and require
additional fees.
Quality Early Education for All 17