Supporting services to improve quality and compliance
The Quality Support Program (QSP) has been assisting quality uplift across the early childhood education and care sector, with 96% of participating services having improved in the number of NQS elements ‘met’ by an average of 12 elements.
16 December 2022
This has led to enhanced early learning environments and experiences for approximately 60,000 children across the state.
The QSP offers free professional development and tailored support to services seeking to improve their quality and compliance.
Delivered by the NSW Department of Education in partnership with the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), the QSP supports participating services to improve their understanding of the NQS and improve the quality of their practice.
Services participating in the QSP were more than twice as likely to achieve a rating of Meeting NQS or above compared to non-participating services with similar circumstances.
Since the program was first implemented in 2018, it has seen 73% of the 588 participating long day care, family day care, preschool and outside school hours care services achieve a rating of Meeting National Quality Standard (NQS) or above following the completion of the program.
Participants are provided with resources focused on their needs and assigned a QSP support facilitator to answer questions, discuss improvement priorities, encourage critical reflection, and provide one-on-one tailored support.
The program has been expanded to reach more ECEC services with an additional support pathway introduced.
The 2 pathways of the Quality Support Program are:
- The Quality Support Pathway (QSP): a 14-week program which focuses on priority quality areas for each service, codesigning quality improvement practices to support services to meet and/or exceed the NQS. Services are able to register their interest in participating in this pathway.
- The Compliance Support Pathway (CSP): a 6-week program designed for services with identified compliance support needs who are referred to the program by the department.
Feedback from participating services has been overwhelmingly positive.
If you are considering participating in the QSP, take a look at what other ECEC services have to say:
Service leader, Quality Pathway: "Our whole team found the Quality Support Program of extreme value in moving forward towards our goal in providing a quality service that will benefit the children, families, community, educators, management, and other interested parties. We valued our weekly reflective sessions, CoP sessions, e-learning modules and the abundance of resources that were included. As a team we believe this program has given us a deeper understanding of the 2018 NQS and will be used on a regular basis to reflect on current practices."
Service leader, Compliance Pathway: "The QSP is an excellent program to help services to improve their understanding and application of the National Law, Regulations and NQF in their Centre operations. We certainly benefited from the QSP."
For more information about the application process for each pathway or to register your interest in participating, visit ACECQA’s website.
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