Early Childhood Reforms

Early childhood reforms endorsed by Australian Governments

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) endorsed major early childhood reforms at its meeting on 2 July 2009, releasing the first national Early Childhood Development Strategy—Investing in the Early Years, and an Early Years Learning Framework.

The National Early Childhood Development Strategy aims to improve the health, safety, early learning and wellbeing of Australia’s children, and spells out COAG’s shared vision—that by 2020 all children can have the best possible start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation.

The Early Years Learning Framework is a national curriculum framework to guide early childhood educators in the delivery of quality early childhood education and it marks the start of the rollout of the Australian Government’s quality reform agenda.

COAG has agreed to commence a formal consultation process in July on quality reforms to early childhood education and care, representing a major step towards a genuinely national system. A consultation Regulation Impact Statement for the National Quality Agenda is available now.

COAG has agreed to a jointly governed unified national system to replace current licensing and quality assurance processes. Under the approach:

• individual services will need to deal with only one organisation for quality assessment, reducing the regulatory burden on over 10,000 services
• a single set of improved national quality standards that integrate education and care will promote good developmental outcomes for more than one million children attending child care and preschool
• a new ratings system will provide better information about service quality to help parents to choose a service and promote quality improvements amongst services.

For more information check out our Care Providers Resources page.

For more information about the outcomes of the latest COAG meeting, please visit http://www.coag.gov.au.