4240.0 - Preschool Education, Australia, 2015 
Quality Declaration
Quality Declaration ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 26/02/2016
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EXPLANATORY NOTES
SCOPE AND COVERAGE 4 The scope of the Collection consists of all service providers delivering a preschool program to children aged 3 to 6 years (inclusive) enrolled during the reference period. SERVICE PROVIDER 5 A service provider is considered to be in-scope if it was providing a structured, play based learning program, delivered by a degree qualified teacher, aimed at children in the year or two before they commence full-time schooling (a preschool program) during the reference period. CHILD 6 All children who as at 1 July in the collection year were between 3 and 6 years of age (inclusive) and were enrolled during the reference period in a preschool program are in-scope of the Collection. To be considered as enrolled, the child must have attended the preschool program for at least one hour during the reference period, or be absent due to illness or extended holiday leave and expected to return. 7 In an effort to achieve comprehensive coverage, data were sourced from the Australian Government, state and territory education departments and the Catholic Education Office of the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn. The data are mainly sourced from administrative collections, supplemented where necessary to improve the coverage of service providers not otherwise captured due to funding, regulation or licensing arrangements. The coverage in each state and territory for the 2015 Collection is described in Appendix 3 - Jurisdictional Data Quality Statements (available in the second stage of release). 8 The current governance responsibilities for ECE within each jurisdiction are outlined below:
DATA COMPARABILITY 9 To ensure national comparability, all jurisdictions were required to follow national data standards. The Early Childhood Education and Care National Minimum Data Set (ECEC NMDS) is a set of national data standards which has been established by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), in conjunction with the ABS, the Department of Education and Training, and state and territory departments responsible for early childhood education. More information on the ECEC NMDS can be found on the AIHW website <http://meteor.aihw.gov.au>. 10 Not all jurisdictions were able to align their collection methods precisely with these standards as described in Appendix 3 (available in the second stage of release). Issues affecting data comparability between the states and territories are included as footnotes and/or explanatory notes within this publication. LONG DAY CARE CENTRE DATA 11 For the 2015 Collection, information on preschool programs delivered in Long Day Care (LDC) settings was primarily provided by the Australian Government from the Child Care Management System (CCMS), through which all services approved for the purposes of administering Child Care Benefit (CCB) are obliged to provide data. 12 The Australian Government Department of Education and Training implemented an expanded service and child identification and imputation strategy for the 2015 Collection. All LDCs were requested to complete the preschool program component of the CCMS and the Department conducted a follow-up phone survey with those LDCs that did not respond. Where the phone survey indicated that an LDC was delivering Preschool, the children and their Preschool episode information was imputed from information stored in the CCMS. 13 Similar data was also drawn from the CCMS where an LDC was identified as delivering a preschool program based on:
14 The implementation of this strategy is a significant contributor to the differences in data between the 2015 and 2014 Collections. COLLECTION DATE AND REFERENCE PERIOD 15 The Collection date is the first Friday in August of each year. The census date for the 2015 Collection is Friday 7 August 2015, with the 1 week reference period spanning 3 of August to the 9 of August 2015. Some jurisdictions may adopt a 2 week reference period that needs to include the census week. This means the permissible period spans the 27 of July to the 16 of August 2015 inclusive. Jurisdictional collection dates and reference periods for 2015 are summarised in the table below:
MEASUREMENT CONCEPTS 16 Jurisdictions collect and report data for the Collection using either a Unit Record Level (URL) collection methodology or combination of URL and aggregate collection methodologies. 17 A URL methodology collects information for individual children and service providers. In 2015, all jurisdictions were able to collect data applying a URL methodology. 18 An aggregate methodology collects aggregated information at the service provider level. In 2015 Qld collected aggregate data from a number of unfunded preschool programs in ‘community’, ‘other private for profit’ and ‘independent’ preschools. Qld also collected aggregate data from non-government LDCs. 19 A URL collection is the most appropriate method for ensuring a child who is enrolled in multiple preschool programs is only counted once in child level estimates. Aggregate data collection methodologies are limited in their capacity to identify children attending multiple preschool programs. Therefore, care needs to be taken when interpreting the Qld results due to the inherent data limitations caused by the use of a combination of child URL and aggregate methodologies. EPISODES 20 For the Collection, an episode is a single occurrence of a child enrolled in and/or attending a preschool program. When a child attends two different preschool programs, this is described as a child having two attendance episodes. UNIQUE CHILD COUNTS 21 The unique child count ensures that when a child attends two or more different preschool programs, the child is only counted once. In any given collection year, the number of unique children will be expected to be less than their number of preschool episodes. YEAR BEFORE FULL-TIME SCHOOLING (YBFS) 22 The year before full-time schooling (YBFS) population includes children aged 4 years and children aged 5 years who have not previously attended a preschool program as a 4 year old. Operationally, the identification of children who attended a preschool program in a previous year is achieved when 2 years of data have been collected using a URL data collection methodology and, a preschool repeater indicator applied. PRESCHOOL PROGRAM FEES 23 Fee schedules can differ between programs, organisations and jurisdictions. Fees may be charged daily, weekly, annually, per session or per term. If data is collected at any level other than weekly, the weekly fee is derived from the collected fee and fee schedule. Fees charged are usually based on the number of hours of a preschool program a child is enrolled to receive. 24 For aggregate data, information on fees per child is based on a service's schedule of fixed fees, for example a charge of $150 per full term. For URL data, information on fees is collected at the episode level. Where a child has more than one preschool episode, their fees are calculated by summing the fees for all of their episodes. 25 In 2015 preschool fees were unable to be identified separately from LDC fees in the CCMS. Preschool fees in CCMS were calculated by proportioning the preschool hours to the total hours at the LDC centre for each enrolment. This assumes that a fee structure for a preschool program at a LDC centre is the same as the fee structure for non-preschool program care at the same LDC centre. 26 Data on fees are rounded to the nearest dollar for publication. HOURS 27 For aggregate data, information on hours is collected at the service provider level. Hours per child are derived based on the number of enrolments at that service provider. 28 For URL data, information on hours is collected at the episode level. Where a child has more than one episode at a preschool program their hours are calculated by summing the hours for all of their episodes. 29 Data on hours are rounded to the nearest hour for publication. Hours less than 1 but more than 0 are rounded to 1 hour. ESTIMATED RESIDENT POPULATION (ERP) 30 The preliminary ERP figures presented in this publication are published numbers based on the 2011 Census. The ABS has provided these numbers as indicative only. They have been included here to support comparative reporting that has been performed using the 2011 ERP time series. In the Collection, children enrolled and attending preschool programs in Jervis Bay have been included in statistics for the ACT. The Other Territories of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands have been included in statistics for WA. Official ERP numbers for WA and ACT do not include Other Territories.
CLASSIFICATIONS 31 Statistics in this publication are presented according to Sector, Statistical Geography and Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). SECTOR 32 The Sector classification used in this publication is a combination of the service provider characteristics Service Activity Type and Management Type, which are part of the ECEC NMDS. Where a child is enrolled in multiple preschool programs, the child’s sector is determined by the characteristics of all the providers at which the child was enrolled. 33 Tables presented with this classification assign episodes and unique child counts to states and territories according to the geographic location of the service provider. 34 A small number of service providers in Qld were described as having a service activity type of occasional care and have been classified as LDCs with a preschool program. STATISTICAL GEOGRAPHY 35 The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) is the ABS' geographical framework, which came into effect from July 2011. The ASGS replaced the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC). For the 2015 Collection, data have been classified to the ASGS Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) and may be output using aggregations of ASGS SA1s and higher statistical areas. 36 The digital boundaries, codes and labels for each of these regions can be downloaded from the ABS website free of charge <https://www.abs.gov.au/geography>. 37 The Remoteness Structure within the ASGS divides each state and territory into areas on the basis of their relative access to services. The classes of Remoteness Area (RA) are:
38 For more information please refer to the online publication: Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS): Volume 5 - Remoteness Structure, July 2011 (cat. no. 1270.0.55.005). 39 The statistics presented using RAs in this publication have been assigned using the child’s usual residence. Where a child’s usual residence is not stated, their main service provider’s geography is used as a proxy. If the service provider’s geography is also not stated, the child’s RA may be imputed where possible and otherwise included only in the totals. It is possible for states or territories to have a zero count in a certain RA class; Tasmania does not contain a Major City, the Northern Territory does not contain a Major City or an Inner Regional classification, and ACT does not contain Remote or Very Remote classifications. 40 The quantity of records for which RA was derived, using service provider geography, can be identified from the Not Stated SEIFA IRSD data. SOCIO-ECONOMIC INDEXES FOR AREAS 41 The SEIFA is a product developed especially for those interested in the assessment of the welfare of Australian communities. SEIFA is a suite of four summary measures that have been created from 2011 Census of Population and Housing information. For each index, every geographic area in Australia is given a SEIFA number which shows how disadvantaged that area is compared with other areas in Australia. Quintiles are calculated by ordering the scores for all areas from lowest to highest, with the lowest 20% of areas given a quintile number of 1 and so on, up to the highest 20% of areas which are given a quintile number of 5. The indexes provide more general measures of socio-economic status than is given by measuring, for example, income or unemployment alone. The SEIFA index used for the Collection is the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD). Where a child’s geography was not stated, the SEIFA IRSD is published as Not Stated. 42 For more information on SEIFA please see the Information Paper: An Introduction to Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), 2006 (cat. no. 2039.0). CONFIDENTIALITY 43 The Census and Statistics Act 1905 provides the authority for the ABS to collect statistical information, and requires that statistical output shall not be published or disseminated in a manner that is likely to enable the identification of a particular person or organisation. This requirement means that the ABS must ensure that any statistical information about individuals cannot be derived from published data. 44 To minimise the risk of identifying individuals in aggregate statistics, a technique is used to randomly adjust cell values and summary variables. This technique is called perturbation. Perturbation involves small random adjustment of the statistics and is considered the most satisfactory technique for avoiding the release of identifiable statistics while maximising the range of information that can be released. These adjustments have a negligible impact on the underlying pattern of the statistics. 45 After perturbation, a given published cell value will be consistent across all tables. However, adding up cell values to derive a total will not necessarily give the same result as published totals. 46 The introduction of perturbation in this publication ensures that these statistics are consistent with statistics released via services such as TableBuilder. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 47 For more information on these Collection measurement concepts see the National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection: Concepts, Sources and Methods, 2013 (cat. no. 4240.0.55.001). 48 For more information on data collection instructions and guidelines see the National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection: Data Collection Guide, 2015 (available on request). 49 Additional statistics are available from Microdata: Preschool Education, Australia, 2015 (cat. no. 4240.0.55.003) using the TableBuilder and/or DataLab facilities. 50 For more information on Estimated Resident Population and Population Projections, see Australian Demographic Statistics (cat. no. 3101.0), Population by Age and Sex, Regions of Australia (cat. no. 3235.0) and Estimates and Projections, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (cat. no. 3238.0). 51 As well as the statistics included in this and related publications, the ABS may have other relevant data available on request. Inquiries should be made to the National Information and Referral Service (NIRS) on 1300 135 070. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window.
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