Could you tell us a bit about your service and about the Aboriginal Land which your service operate on?

Georges Hall Early Learning and Kinder, is a long day care service based in the Sydney suburb of Georges Hall, located on the lands of the Darug and Eora peoples. In mid-2020 our service participated in ACECQA’s Quality Support Program (QSP), which is funded by the NSW Department of Education. When our service was accepted into the QSP, our rating was at Working Towards the National Quality Standard (NQS). Through participating in this supportive program, within a few months we were able to improve our quality service delivery and achieve an Exceeding NQS rating.

What key techniques used in the QSP assisted your service to improve?

After entering the QSP, our leadership team at Georges Hall was prompted to complete an initial self-evaluation of our service and reflect on our practice against each Quality Area of the NQS. We found this initial reflection very beneficial, as it allowed us to recognise where we were currently at as a service and where we wanted to be moving forward.

Utilising the initial self-evaluation as a starting point, we worked together with the guidance from our Quality Support Facilitator to reflect on the what, why and how in everything our service does. This quickly became the driving force in everything we do, ensuring we understand our what, why and how within our everyday practices.

One key focus of support during the QSP was reflecting on our service philosophy and its relationship to our practices. As a leadership team, we chose to break our philosophy apart line by line to move towards a philosophy that reflected the voices of educators, families and children.

We achieved this by using a philosophy in action form, to provide all those involved in our service an opportunity to offer their views and feedback. Reflecting on the feedback received, we worked to create a new simplified service philosophy that accurately reflected the views and beliefs that were evident in our practice.

How has participation in the QSP assisted your service to improve?

Participation in the QSP program has assisted our continuous quality improvement as a service. Use of critical reflection was another key element of focus throughout the program. We worked closely with our Quality Support Facilitator to explore various aspects of our service practice. This process allowed us to stop and think about the ways we can critically reflect, using the ‘what, why and how’ approach throughout this process. As a service team we are committed to critical reflection, and we found using the NQS Exceeding themes useful during the process. We feel these important critical reflections contributed to our service achieving an overall rating of Exceeding the NQS, following our participation in the QSP.

Participating in the QSP Program has assisted our quality improvement as a service and is a program we would highly recommend. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our Quality Support Facilitator. They were very approachable, supportive and allowed us to check in about anything, at any time. We feel a main part of our service receiving an Exceeding rating was due to their feedback, extensive knowledge and materials provided.

Visit the ACECQA website for more information on the Quality Support Program.