Kelly Seaburg: Advocates for Early Learning Excellence Chair on the review finding only 53% of ECE centres meet the quality threshold

Reviews and reports aren't enough to keep the early childhood sector up to scratch.  

The Education Review Office has found almost half of ECE services don't meet the quality threshold, down from 64% a year earlier. 

Advocates for Early Learning Excellence Chair Kelly Seaburg told Mike Hosking although the results are better, it also highlights things to work on.  

She says there needs to be a stronger systemic approach to lifting professional development and leadership. 

Seaburg also says there needs to be more than just reviews to better the sector.  

She says at the end of the day, there's no real teeth to these reports, and we can't leave children's education to chance. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm new data this morning from Heerro Education Review Office

(00:02):
on our ECE sector early childhood forty seven percent of
standalone services were below the quality threshold. Now if you
think that isn't good, it is actually better than the
sixty four percent who were below at the year before.
So what's going on. Kelly Seberg is the chair of
Advocates for Early Learning Excellence And as with us, Kelly,
very good morning to you. Good morning mate, So glass

(00:23):
half full. We are improving, and I would argue materially
sixty four to forty seven is pretty good, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Well, it is definitely an improvement, which is great to see.
I guess the figures certainly highlight that there is variability
in standalone services and ECE, and I think there were
some really interesting findings from AERO that said we really
do need a systemic approach across the sector to develop
leadership and professional development and intectual teaching practices. And I
completely agreevers with their findings and at the moment accept

(00:51):
the chances to how well an EC service and this
time and development of their staff.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Is this being driven by anybody? So next to you
when I get you on it's down to third Fible
thirty two or thirty one or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well, I guess Ero would say, well, if we provide
these reports, this should be lifting services should be using
needs to help them improve their quality of training. But
there's actually no there's no real peace to these reports
that they end of the day, you know that they're
made public, and hopefully that's the way that services don't
want to be embarrassed by having a poor err review.
But I think there needs to be far more than that.

(01:26):
We can't leave children's education for their transition into school
and their lifelong learning outcomes to chance and say, oh well,
some that service providers might say, well a bad review,
it's fine, there's nothing when we're not going to improve
because we're still giving people through the door. So I
do think they need to have a much stronger systemic
approach to lifting the professional development of our teachers across

(01:48):
museum as an e CE and leadership as a real
area of that needs improvement.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, hopefully when we get you back next year, we've
got even better numbers to report. Kelly appreciate it. Kelly Sieberg,
who's the Bolder's the chair of their It's for learning
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