Simon Laube: Early Childhood Council Chief Executive on some ECE centres not meeting required standards

Early childhood centres are lifting their game, with fewer falling below quality standards.

Education Review Office monitoring shows 47% of standalone services didn’t meet the quality threshold, down from 64% a year earlier.

Early Childhood Council Chief Executive Simon Laube says the reviews are just snapshots and even the best centres go through staff changes and have to rebuild quality.

He told Ryan Bridge that the reviews are sensitive, so anything that’s slightly out of place will appear on the review, and pretty much everyone will have something. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Almost half of early childhood centers arned up to scratch.
This is according to a new review from ERO. Forty
seven percent of standalone services were below the quality threshold
for twenty four to twenty five. But that's actually an
improvement from sixty four percent weren't upscratched last time? Obviously
still not great. Simon Loeber is with US CEO of
Early Childhood Counsel Simon, good.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Morning, Good morning, Ryan, Good to have you on the program.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
So is this something we should be really concerned about,
like what types of standards are they not meeting?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Not really, No, I wouldn't be concerned about this. It
is the Education Review Office doing their job and what
we're seeing is a significant improvement from just one year.
And whilst I know it does sound like a low percentage,
it shows the sensitivity of the reviews that they're doing.

(00:54):
That they do. They do try and look at a
lot of things, and if they see something slightly out
of place, it's going to be appearing on your review
and so you will end up with pretty much everyone
getting found with something somewhere that's not quite right. And yeah,
it's it is concerning, but it is why you have

(01:16):
the review so that you have the early chartered services
focused on improvement. And if we look at those areas
that made up that fifty three percent, the best performing
area was around learners and their learning, which was sixty
five percent, so that were above so that was really good.

(01:37):
The weakest area was actually in professional learning and development,
which tallies with what we're hearing of a workforce is
under massive pressure with not a lot of help.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
But that still leaves an on the learning thirty five
percent that are below the standard. Presumably, I mean that's
not great.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, it's it is what it is, ryan that is
and it's an improvement on the year before. So yeah,
people who don't like to see it, but that is
the state of our early childhood provision and that's this
independent evaluation team that showed us every year and it's
actually a massive improvement. There was seventeen percent lower the

(02:18):
previous year.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
How do you get if you're a parent, how do
you get a good one?

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Then?

Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know, how do you know who's good?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, that's that's a different question altogether, isn't it. It's
a bit like is that cake done? Like, personally, you
know you've got to you've got to find the right
service for your child, and every child is different and
there are quite a lot of different options out there.
So if you're going into centers and you need long

(02:48):
hours of care for a day, then you definitely need
to go and visit a few different centers. And it's
a bit like looking at properties you've it's only by
looking at a few that you start to build up
a sense about you know, what is it we are
looking for for our child and you might get it
wrong as well. You could find one that you think

(03:08):
looks really good, but actually your child doesn't settle comfortably
and that's important too.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Simon, good to have you on the program. Thank you,
Simon Larba's CEO of Early Childhood Counselors. For more from
Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to news Talks
it'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.