The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has endorsed major early childhood reforms at its meeting on 2 July 2009.

COAG has released the first national Early Childhood Development Strategy—Investing in the Early Years to guide future reforms to support around two million children aged under eight and their families.

The National Quality Agenda comprises four key components:

• New national quality standards

• Enhanced regulatory arrangements
• A quality rating system
• An Early Years Learning Framework

COAG has released a Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) for the early childhood education and care quality reforms for public consultation.

The RIS outlines COAG’s proposals to implement a national system to replace current licensing and quality assurance processes, and a single set of national quality standards for education and care including options for improved staff to child ratios and higher staff qualification requirements. 

A proposed new ratings system will provide better information about service quality to help parents to choose a service and promote quality improvements amongst services. 

Australian Governments are seeking the views of parents, the industry, and the broader community on what is needed to improve the quality of education and care received by Australia’s children.

The direct link to public information is:

http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Policy_Agenda/Quality/Pages/RegulationImpact.aspx

There will be a round of consultations in July to seek views of the community for consideration in developing a final proposal for COAG later this year. There will be four meetings in NSW: Newcastle, Orange, Sydney CBD and Parramatta and one in Canberra.

Questions to be used in the Consultations can be found on P46 of the Regulation Impact Statement for Early Childhood Education and Care Quality Reforms COAG Consultation RIS July 2009

There is also an opportunity to participate in an on-line survey and to make written submissions by the 31 August 2009.