Quality Early Education for All

and attendance data; unit-level data tracking and linking hours of attendance, pattern of attendance and
type of program or environment; and systematic collection of learning and wellbeing outcomes data to
enable more comprehensive evaluation of the impact of practice and policy differences.
Data linkage: pursuing opportunities for linking early childhood data to child and family health service
data, the AEDC, NAPLAN and other government administrative data, including data held by the Australian
Government Department of Human Services, such as families receiving Family Tax Benefit. This will
enable much more rigorous and long-term tracking of the impact of investments in early education,
especially the more useful and granular data that enables an assessment of ‘what works, for whom, and
in what circumstances’.
Research: a long-term research strategy would provide both direction and funding for crucial, policyrelevant
research (Harrison et al, 2012; AIHW, 2015). Priorities include longitudinal data to track impact,
rigorous (experimental) evaluation of high-intensity programs targeted at vulnerable children,
implementation studies that track system-wide delivery and impact; and the ability to track populationlevel
changes.
Data literacy and information dissemination: concurrent investment in making research findings and
data available, accessible and meaningful, to both policy-makers and early childhood practitioners, is
crucial.
A national independent coordinating agency should be established to collect, link, analyse and disseminate data,
with the capacity to drive a national data linkage agenda. This body could be established either as a standalone
body or as a new responsibility of an existing organisation.
Recommendation 5: Recognising the importance of early education
Commence a national campaign to strengthen family and community knowledge and beliefs about
children’s early learning
Building family and community knowledge about children’s learning in the early years – through a evidenceinformed
national social marketing campaign – will encourage greater family engagement in children’s learning
and enhanced recognition of the importance of early education.
A campaign that makes the insights of the science of early childhood deveopment accessible and available to
families will promote positive home learning environments, while also contributing to to boosting early
education enrolment and attendance rates and the status of early childhood educators.
The campaign should highlight the importance of early education for amplifying children’s learning and
development. It should be a long-term campaign, informed by strategic communication strategies and existing
evidence on the elements of effective practice, including:
using multiple media channels;
delivery in partnership with the early childhood sector;
building on existing programs, apps and resouces (such as the NSW Health’s Love Talk Play Sing Read app,
TheSmith Family’s Let’s Count proram or the Parenting Research Centre’s smalltalk); and
communicaton targeted at key cohorts, including translation into different languages.
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