TASMANIA
OVERVIEW
In Tasmania, 'kindergarten' is the term used for the year before compulsory school (referred to within this manual as 'preschool') and 'preparatory' is the term used for a child’s first year of compulsory school (year 1 minus 1). Preschool programs are offered to children who are 4 years of age as at 1 January of the reference year. Exceptions may be granted for gifted children (they must be at least 3 years and 6 months of age as at 1 January of the reference year) and children previously enrolled in a government pre-school in another state.
LEGISLATION AND LICENSING
The Education Act 1990 (Tas.) is the relevant legislation for preschool education provided by government and non-government schools, and LDCs in Tasmania. Under that legislation, a preschool can only operate within a registered school.
Preschools provided in government schools are regulated by the Department of Education (DoE). Non-government school and long day-care centres (LDCs) registered as a school are regulated by the Schools Registration Board. As preschools in Tasmania are registered or delivered as part of the school system (including preschool provided in LDCs registered as a school), all teachers are required to be qualified and registered. Most preschool teachers in Tasmania are trained in early childhood education as a part of their degree, but this is not mandatory.
MANAGEMENT TYPES
In Tasmania, there are both government and non-government managed services providing preschool programs.
Preschool
Preschools in Tasmania consist of the following management types:
Government managed
Government preschools in Tasmania are delivered, funded and staffed by the Tasmanian DoE. All government preschools are integrated with a primary or district high school and are normally located on the same campus. The preschool curriculum is part of the school curriculum. Levies are payable for each child to attend a government preschool program, however for those families deemed low income families, no levy is payable.
Non-government managed
Independent schools: Most registered non-government schools with a primary school component provide preschool programs within their school curriculum and receive funding from DoE. These providers charge a fee per child to enrol in their preschool programs.
Long Day Care Centres: While Tasmania has a number of LDC providers, only one has a main service activity type of preschool. This LDC is regulated under the Education Act and is registered with the schools registration board, and is therefore registered as a school for the purposes of providing a preschool program. This LDC had no enrolled preschool students in 2010.
Long day care
Long Day Care Centres: There are a number of LDC’s in Tasmania that have a main service activity type that is not preschool. These services are regulated under the Child Care Act 2001 (Tas.). In 2010 Tasmania did not collect data from these LDCs.
QUALITY OF DATA SOURCE
In 2010 for the purposes of the National ECEC Collection, Tasmania had two separate collection methods for government and non-government data, the Government School Census and the Non-government Preschool Census.
Both the Government School Census and the Non-government Preschool Census collected data at the unit record level (URL).
Preschool programs in an LDC setting which were not registered with the Schools Registration Board, were not officially recognised as preschool by Tasmania, and therefore were not included in either the 2010 Government School Census or the Non-government Preschool 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.
Government School Census
The majority of government preschool data were sourced from the Government School Census, which collected data at unit record level (URL).
Teacher qualifications were obtained by DoE from the Tasmanian Teacher Registration Board. Student fees data were obtained from an Internet and telephone survey of Tasmanian schools, and matched with whether an individual student was eligible for a subsidy or not.
Institutional environment
The organisation responsible for the Government School Census was the Tasmania Department of Education (DoE).
Relevance
The data collected by DoE in the School Census was used to report on Tasmanian and Commonwealth Government achievements against targets and to assist with the evaluation and planning of service provision. For preschools, the information obtained was used to determine the funding that would be provided to each service.
The scope for the early childhood component of the census, consisted of all children aged 3 to 6 years old who were attending a preschool program at a registered government school in Tasmania. All registered government schools in Tasmania participated in the census. Data from non-government preschools was collected in a separate census.
In 2010 for Tasmanian government preschool programs, data were collected at URL as follows:
- Preschool programs: information on service operations and characteristics.
- Staff: at the person level, information on type of work activity and teacher primary role.
- Children aged between 3 to 6 years old and enrolled at a government service: information on personal characteristics, enrolment and attendance. Early entry students were included if they were classified as:
- Gifted: a child who had fulfilled the requirements of the guidelines for early school entry for students who are gifted.
- Interstate: a child who had previously been enrolled in a preschool in another state or territory and who now resides in Tasmania.
Timeliness
The collection was undertaken on the Tasmanian School Census date at 6 August 2010, for a representative fortnight of 26 July to 6 August 2010. This representative fortnight was used by the ABS to derive a one week reference period to enable comparison with other jurisdictions. Completion of the data processing and validation stage took approximately 2 to 3 months after the collection date, at which time the data were delivered to the ABS.
Accuracy
A census of government preschools is conducted annually in August, as part of the School Census. In 2010 all registered government providers offering a preschool program were required to participate in the census.
The process of obtaining and processing data in Tasmania commenced with service providers uploading information from each child enrolment form into the Government Schools Administrative Computer System, which stored the information in a data warehouse. The data warehouse had a number of inbuilt data quality checks that provided timely data feedback to schools. An exception report was produced daily, with the central business support unit following up all issues. Data from the warehouse was then used to populate the Schools Census. A reference table of students enrolled in Tasmanian government schools was then created in the DoE data repository.
The census data were reviewed and cleaned by DoE staff. This process included numerous quality checks such as confirming student ages, hours enrolled, and verifying duplicate enrolments across schools. A declaration report was sent to schools, which the principal reviewed and was required to declare that all data were true and correct. This set of students became the authoritative dataset for the census date. Tasmanian preschool students were extracted from this census dataset, to match with all other data collated for the National ECEC Collection. Extensive quality assurance occurred for the attendance and qualification data, to ensure that the data were consistent with other DoE data sources.
Some specific validation methods for Tasmanian government preschools included:
- Identifying and investigating duplicate records.
- Verifying all addresses by child and service provider using specialised software.
- Ensuring data were within expected ranges.
- Ensuring counts (e.g. of males and females) summed to totals.
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 Tasmanian DoE 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.
For 2010 data, Tasmanian DoE were able to identify double counting and apply appropriate methods for the following situations:
- 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). Due to collecting both government and non-government data and using a child SLK, this type of double counting were able to be identified.
- Within sector: where children are enrolled in more than one government preschool at once. Due to the URL methodology, double counting within sectors in Tasmania was unlikely.
- 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 in Tasmania was achieved through comparable time series for government preschool data.
Further information on data elements:
- The data elements preschool hours attended and enrolled were based on the number of sessions each child attended over a two week period. Absences for whole sessions were recorded.
- Preschool attendance hours were used as a proxy for maximum preschool program hours available per week.
Interpretability
An online training system was available to users of the SACS system.
Accessibility
National and jurisdictional level information is published in
Experimental Estimates of Preschool Education, Australia, 2010 (cat. no. 4240.0) on the ABS website.
Non-government Preschool Census
Data from non-government preschools were collected from the Non-government Preschool Census, which collected data at URL.
Institutional environment
The organisation responsible for the Non-government Preschool Census was the Tasmania Department of Education (DoE).
Relevance
The data collected by DoE were used to meet state and Commonwealth Government reporting commitments and to assist with the evaluation and planning of service provision. For preschools, the information obtained was used to determine the funding that would be provided to services. The data collected assisted in the calculation of the General Education Grant paid by the DoE for eligible students in non-government schools. The data were also used for reporting to the Commonwealth on achievements against reporting targets.
The scope of this collection consisted of all children aged 3 to 6 years old who were attending a preschool program that was part of a registered non-government school or registered LDC in Tasmania. All registered non-government schools providing a preschool program participated in the census. The one LDC registered with the Schools Registration Board participated in the census, however this LDC had no enrolled preschool students for 2010. Tasmania did not collect data from those LDCs that were not registered with the Schools Registration Board. For the purposes of the National ECEC Collection, the ABS aims to collect data on preschool programs within a LDC in future collection cycles via the Child Care Management System. Data from government preschools was collected in a separate census.
In 2010 for Tasmanian non-government preschool programs, data were collected at URL level for:
- Preschool programs: information on service operations and characteristics;
- Staff: at the person level, information on type of work activity and teacher primary role.
- Children aged between 3 to years old and enrolled at a non-government service: information on personal characteristics, enrolment and attendance. Early entry students were included if they were classified as:
- Gifted: a child who has fulfilled the requirements of the guidelines for early school entry for students who are gifted.
- Interstate: a child who has previously been enrolled in a preschool in another state or territory and who now resides in Tasmania.
Timeliness
The collection was undertaken on the Tasmania census date at 6 August 2010, for a representative fortnight of 26 July to 6 August 2010. This representative fortnight was used by the ABS to derive a one week reference period to enable comparison with other jurisdictions. Completion of the data processing and validation stage took approximately 2 to 3 months after the collection date, at which time the data were delivered to the ABS.
Accuracy
In 2010 data from non-government preschools were collected via an Excel format spreadsheet. There were five worksheets to be completed by each service provider, which included details regarding the school, teachers, students, classes and attendance. Detailed explanations and definitions were provided for each question.
The process for collecting data from the non-government sector, commenced with service providers uploading information from each child enrolment form into the non-government service provider data repository. Data from the non-government data repository was then forwarded to the DoE data repository. Data for the 2010 ECEC Collection was sourced directly from the DoE data repository.
Once all Tasmanian data were received and quality assured, DoE reviewed the data and returned a summary to each service provider of the final enrolments.
Some specific validation methods for Tasmanian non-government preschools included:
- Identifying and investigating duplicate records.
- Ensuring all address data fields were populated, with no PO Box addresses. Data were reviewed to establish a valid CD.
- Ensuring data were within expected ranges.
- Ensuring counts (e.g. of males and females) summed to totals.
- Ensuring single sex schools were reported with only one sex.
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 Tasmanian DoE 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.
For 2010 data, Tasmanian DoE were able to identify double counting and apply appropriate methods for the following situations:
- 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 NMDS. Due to collecting both government and non-government data and using a child SLK this type of double counting was able to be identified.
- Within sector: where children are enrolled in more than one non-government preschool at once. Due to the URL methodology, Tasmania was able to eliminate double counting within the non-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). Identification of this type of double counting in Tasmania was achieved through comparable time series for non-government preschool data.
Further information on data elements:
- The data elements preschool hours attended and enrolled were based on the number of sessions each child attended over a two week period. Absences for whole sessions are recorded.
- Preschool attendance hours were used as a proxy for maximum preschool program hours available per week.
Interpretability
The census spreadsheet provided to non-government preschools included a definitions page, which explained the relevant concepts and definitions for the census. A contact phone number and email were also provided to assist those completing the form.
Accessibility
National and jurisdictional level information is published in
Experimental Estimates of Preschool Education, Australia, 2010 (cat. no. 4240.0).
The information contained within this report has been sourced from the Tasmania DoE website
<www.education.tas.gov.au/> as well as from consultations held between the DoE and the ABS.
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