AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY
OVERVIEW
In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), ‘preschool’ is the term used for a child’s year before full-time schooling (year 1 minus 2) and ‘kindergarten’ is the term used for the first year of full-time school (year 1 minus 1). Children in the ACT are eligible to enrol in a preschool program at the beginning of the year if they turn 4 years old on or prior to 30 April of the same year. Children with special needs may be placed in a targeted preschool program from 3 years of age. Indigenous children, hearing impaired children, children for whom English is a second language and gifted children, are also eligible for early entry.
LEGISLATION AND LICENSING
The Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services (DHCS) in the ACT is responsible for the licensing and monitoring of child care and preschool services under the Education Act 2004 (ACT). Licensed children's services include centre-based care (long day care and occasional care), school aged care, non-government preschools and play-schools. Teachers are required to have teaching qualifications, but do not need to have early childhood qualifications to be eligible for teaching in a preschool.
MANAGEMENT TYPES
Preschool
In the ACT, there are both government and non-government managed services providing preschool programs.
Government managed
ACT government preschools are delivered and funded by the ACT Department of Education and Training (DET). These government preschools are amalgamated with primary schools and are staffed by the DET. There is no compulsory levy payable by children attending a government preschool program in the ACT.
Non-government managed
Community (not for-profit): Providers within this sector include churches and community groups. These services do not receive funding from the ACT government.
Private for-profit: Private for-profit providers include corporations, sole traders, individuals or entities, which do not receive funding from the ACT government.
Independent schools / Catholic schools: These preschool programs are provided by registered non-government schools. These services do not receive funding from the ACT government and set their own fees.
Long day care
LDCs in ACT can operate within the following settings:
Community (not for-profit): Providers within this sector include churches and community groups. These services do not receive funding from the ACT government.
Private for-profit: Private for-profit providers include corporations, sole traders, individuals or entities, which do not receive funding from the ACT government.
Independent schools / Catholic schools: These preschool programs are provided by registered non-government schools. These services do not receive funding from the ACT government and set their own fees.
QUALITY OF DATA SOURCE
ACT School Census
In 2010 the ACT had one main source for the collection of data in relation to preschool programs, the ACT School Census, which collected data at unit record level (URL) from government preschools. Data on school information and staffing qualifications were obtained from other ACT administrative data sets.
Non-government data were collected by DET in the February School Census at URL, however this was not comparable to URL government data collected in the August School Census due to the timing of the two collections. Therefore, only government preschools were included for the 2010 National ECEC Collection. Negotiations are currently occurring to work towards gaining access to non-government URL data for future inclusion in the National ECEC Collection.
Institutional environment
The organisation responsible for the School Census was the ACT Department of Education and Training (DET).
Relevance
The data collected from the ACT School Census enabled reporting across the ACT ECEC sector for a variety of reporting requirements and was used to ensure effective delivery of children's education services.
The scope for the early childhood component of the census, included all children in the year before full-time schooling, who were officially enrolled in a government school on the school census day and who were actively attending in a preschool program at that school. Jervis Bay School was included in the census, as the ACT DET administers the Jervis Bay School for the Australian Government under a service agreement. Children who were absent for more than 4 continuous school weeks prior to the census date were included if the principal received written documentation signed by the child's guardian indicating that the child would return to school.
In 2010 for ACT government preschool programs, data were collected at URL as follows:
- Preschool programs: information on service operations and characteristics;
- Children enrolled at a government service: at URL, information on personal characteristics, and enrolment and attendance;
- Staff: at the person level, information on type of work activity and teacher primary role.
Non-government preschool data were not able to be provided for the 2010 National ECEC Collection, however there are plans to include this in the future.
Preschool programs in an LDC were not officially recognised as preschool by ACT DET, and therefore were not included in the 2010 School Census. The Early Childhood Education and Care National Minimum Data Set (ECEC NMDS) defines that a preschool program can operate in an LDC if the program comprises a structured education program usually provided by a qualified teacher. Jurisdictional collections currently do not have full coverage of preschool programs being delivered in LDC as defined by the ECEC NMDS for the National ECEC Collection. Data sourced from the Child Care Management System (CCMS) is required to achieve full coverage of preschool activity in LDC nationally. CCMS preschool data was not included in the 2010 collection due to the required information not being collected. In the future, the National ECEC Collection aims to include information on preschool programs provided within LDC through the CCMS.
Timeliness
The collection was undertaken on the ACT School Census date at 6 August 2010, for a representative week of 2 August to 6 August 2010. Completion of data processing and validation stages took approximately 2 to 3 months after the collection date, at which time the data were delivered to the ABS.
Accuracy
In 2010 public preschool data were obtained from a point in time sweep of enrolment and attendance data stored in a school-based child data management system called MAZE, an administrative data recording system. Individual child information was captured from data supplied via an enrolment form which was entered into MAZE by school staff. Additional data were sourced from the human resources database.
The process of obtaining data in the ACT was managed through the MAZE system. Each ACT government school had access to their own MAZE database, where teachers or administrators uploaded information on each child enrolment. The principal of each school was required to sign off on their school's total enrolment count by sex and year level. Any inconsistencies were followed up. Every school's MAZE system was linked to a central database, which could only be accessed by central office staff. At census time, child enrolment information was extracted from the central database and cross checked with schools.
The following list includes key approaches undertaken by the ACT in managing the quality of its data processing for 2010:
- ACT's system included automatic edits and mandatory fields, such as date of birth, sex, family details, attendance status and Indigenous status.
- ACT cross checked addresses for the preschools ensuring one existed for each service provider.
- Addresses for Koori preschools (preschool programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children) were manually added as they were not in the system.
- Addresses were geo-coded against ACT block data to ensure the address was valid.
- A MAZE manual was available to users to assist in data entry and extraction. Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs guidelines were also used for instances where key data items were unknown. In addition to this, face-to-face training was provided to users of the MAZE system in both entering data and also extracting data, including training on extracting non-routine data.
The ACT carried out validation of the data in a number of ways, including but not limited to:
- Manual data entry was avoided where possible through an automatic transfer of child information when the child had previously attended another ACT government school.
- Addresses could be updated through a geo-coding cross check.
- Date of birth was checked against year level and outliers were followed up.
- Duplicate records of one child attending two schools were followed up.
- Data checks included matching back to the original census data and running aggregate counts for each field.
Coherence
In the collection reference period, a child may be enrolled and attend two or more preschool programs. In order to address key collection requirements, it is important to be able to count each child once. A child may be ‘double counted’ in a number of ways and a URL collection itself may not totally be able to address all the occurrences where double counting of a child may occur. Care needs to be taken when interpreting URL child data from the ACT DET due to double counting that may have occurred:
- Across jurisdictions: where children and their families moved interstate during a preschool year. Eliminating this type of double counting was not achieved in 2010 as a common collection reference date for all jurisdictions was not achieved.
- Across sectors: where a family may be using a government preschool and a non-government preschool. Eliminating this type of double counting is only achievable where multiple URL collections across sectors within a jurisdiction are comparable and compliant with the National Minimum Data Set (NMDS). This is not relevant to ACT data for 2010, because data from non-government preschools were not provided.
For 2010 data, the ACT DET were able to identify double counting for the following situations:
- Within sector: where children are enrolled in more than one government preschool at once. Due to the URL methodology and a student/client database, the ACT was able to eliminate double counting within the government sector.
- Across time: where a child attends preschool for more than 1 year (e.g. a child repeats preschool, or was enrolled in an 'early entry' preschool program). Elimination of this type of double counting was achieved as ACT had a comparable time series for government preschool data.
Further information on data elements:
- Maximum preschool program hours available per week was calculated by the number of weeks that the preschool service is available. The NMDS requires that data on the maximum hours available to each individual child be provided.
- Hours of attendance are derived from the number of sessions each child attends, rather than actual hours of attendance.
- Preschool program delivered by teacher indicator is based on the assumption that all government sector preschools programs in the ACT are delivered by four year trained teachers.
- The role of early childhood education and care worker indicator is based on the assumption that the teachers employed by each service provider are undertaking the role of teacher within that service.
Interpretability
In 2010 the ACT DET provided face-to-face training in the MAZE system, as well as providing a handbook, which outlined how to enter data, extract data, find data and validate data.
Accessibility
National and jurisdictional level information is published in
Experimental Estimates of Preschool Education, Australia, 2010 (cat. no. 4240.0) on the ABS website.
The information contained within this report has been sourced from the ACT DET website and consultations held between the ACT DET and the ABS. Further information is available at:
<http://www.det.act.gov.au/>.
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