Quality Early Education for All

•
Priorities for the next five years
Accelerating quality and access
Over the past decade, Australia has begun building the foundations of a strong and effective platform for early
education, but there is more to be done. To reap the benefits of public investment in early education, the
priorities are boosting access, ramping up quality, investment that reflects impact and better measurement of
that impact.
This section provides a snapshot of key considerations and potential policy directions for accelerating access,
quality and impact. The next section
outlines the Mitchell Institute’s
immediate priority recommendations.
These strategies or approaches are
happening already, the point is that they
tend to be patchy and inconsistent rather
than systematised and sustained.
Our pockets of good practice and
instances of effective policy settings need
to be scaled up across the system,
supported by the information
infrastructure that allows their
effectiveness to be monitored.
Additional work is needed to map out the
detail of each of these priority areas and
key considerations, including funding
options, governance and accountability
mechanisms, implementation planning
and data and evaluation needs.
Australia needs to accelerate
Access to early learning for all children,
including systemic implementation of
evidence-based strategies for attracting
and retaining the families who currently
experience significant barriers to access
The ability of all children receive high
quality early learning with the ‘dose and
intensity’ necessary to make a
difference
The intention of this report is to inform
priorities for action in the short and
medium term.
Throughout 2016, the Mitchell Institute
will be releasing additional papers on its
priority recommendations and catalysing
conversation about the priorities and
strategies explored here.
Investment that is proportionate to
impact, including the investments
necessary to achieve equitable
outcomes for disadvantaged children
and the ability to measure that impact
Quality Early Education for All 39