Microdata on the 2008 Childhood Education and Care Expanded CURF was compiled from the Childhood Education and Care Survey (CEaCS), which was conducted throughout Australia in June 2008 as a supplement to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) monthly Labour Force Survey (LFS).

The main aims of the 2008 CEaCS were to provide estimates of the child care arrangements of children aged 0-12 years, early childhood education and learning of children aged 0-8 years, some aspects of families' requirements for formal child care or preschool, and the education, income and working arrangements of parents with children aged 0-12 years.

The 2008 CEaCS collected information on usual child care arrangements (type of care, hours and cost), child care used in the survey reference week (type of care, hours and cost), usual attendance at preschool, need for any/additional formal care or preschool, and other early childhood education and learning information (types of learning activities that children aged 0-8 years engage in, the environments in which these activities take place, and patterns of attendance at preschool and school).

Steps to confidentialise the dataset for the CURF have been taken to ensure integrity of data, optimise the content and maintain the confidentiality of respondents. The steps taken include removing any information that might uniquely identify an individual, reducing the level of detail available on the CURF for some data items including topcoding, and collapsing some categories within data items.

The expanded CURF can be accessed via the ABS Remote Access Data Laboratory (RADL).

For more information, please refer to the Childhood Education and Care, Expanded CURF Technical Manual, June 2008 (cat. no. 4402.0.55.002).

For a list of ABS CURFs see ABS website <www.abs.gov.au>.