Quality Early Education for All

• Scaling up evidence-based, high-intensity programs for the children most likely to benefit.
• Addressing workforce issues that impact the ability of the sector to ensure quality care, such as discrepancies
in status and remuneration, through a long-term strategy to provide professional wages and access to
professional learning.
• Reinforcing and continuing to embed the pedagogical approaches underpinning the EYLF so that all children
receive developmentally-appropriate educational experiences.
Investment that is proportionate to impact
“Creating a stable research framework would help inform effective policy-making and raise the overall quality of
ECEC. As in other areas of social and educational policy, the field is changing rapidly and there is a need for up-todate
research and evaluation information to strengthen the connections between research, policy, and practice”
(OECD, 2001, p134).
Australia ranks well below the OECD average level of public investment in ECEC and has one of the largest shares
of private funding. Given the potential of high-quality early education to impact learning and wellbeing outcomes,
it warrants an investment that is proportionate to its impact. This requires both an increased investment, a clear
and coherent strategy about where that investment can have the greatest impact, and the ability to measure and
track the size and scale of the impact.
Priorities for investment and impact
Building the data and evidence infrastructure needed to drive policy
reform and maximise investment decisions, including:
o Strengthening nationally consistent data
o Leveraging the opportunities of data linkage to answer the more
fine-grained questions about what works, for whom, and in what
circumstances
o A national research agenda to support identification and systemwide
scale-up of evidence-based practice
o Establishing an independent national body to collect, link, analyse
and disseminate data and information on early childhood
Lifting public investment in early education, with investment targeted
to ensuring access to the highest quality ECEC for vulnerable families
Quality Early Education for All 44