Warwick child care centre identified as exceeding early education national quality standards

As our future generations grow and flourish into the next changemakers in our society, their early childhood education needs are a top priority. Find out which of the Southern Downs’ child care centres are exceeding national quality standards.

As our future generations grow and flourish into the next changemakers in our society, their early childhood education needs are a top priority.

The Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority is responsible for assessing child care centres to ensure they’re continually meeting the seven national standards.

These assessments occur at three-year intervals and involve a combination of in centre observations and reviewing centre’s internal procedures.

For one Southern Downs early childhood education centre, maintaining the national standards in early education remains heavily at the forefront.

St Mary's Kindergarten Mother's Day event. Picture: Jessica Paul / Warwick Daily News

St Mary’s Kindergarten director Marie Sullivan said the early education sector has seen a massive improvement as a result of these quality standards.

“I’ve been in the industry for quite a long time and I do believe there is a stronger development in all of those (assessment) areas,” she said.

“Because we work so closely with the department who come in to do these checks and co-ordinated work with the centre’s that these standards are met.”

The national quality standards assessment focuses on educational programs and practices provided, health and safety, physical environment, staffing arrangements, relationships with children, collaborative partnerships with families and communities governance and leadership.

“The reassurance is that centres get assessed regularly, so they maintain that high standard we want for our children in this industry (as well as) staff that are well trained and supported to help these children and their families as they start their educational journey,” she said.

Ms Sullivan said the staff shortage faced across the education industry as a whole plays a significant role for centre’s still working towards meeting all seven standards.

“In early childhood education at the moment there is a concern about the lack of qualified staff, particularly early childhood teachers,” she said.

“Maintaining staff is very important for all centre’s and for one like ours, we’re quite lucky because we’ve got some very strong relationships with our staff.”

St Mary's Kindergarten children and educators rode through the 2021 Warwick Rodeo Street Parade on the Fontana Brothers float.

Once staff are on board, Ms Sullivan said there were many support networks available within the education department and those particular organisations.

“Recently we had an early childhood meeting where we try to connect all of our centre’s, so that we’re supporting not only other kindy’s but day care centre’s and even the early years teachers at schools,” she said.

“Having that professional network to support colleagues is something that Warwick and Stanthorpe are very strong about, as it’s very important in early childhood.”

Out of the 16 early childhood centre’s in the region, only two Stanthorpe early learning centre’s have been identified as ‘needing significant improvements’ and ‘working towards NQS’.

The state government announced as part of this year’s budget all Queensland children will be eligible to access free kindergarten in a bid to reduce hefty financial stressors faced by families.

The current ACECQA data highlights over 14,000 child care services are operating with a quality rating which is meeting or above the national quality standard across Australia.

Below is a snapshot of Queensland’s early education centre’s performing data.