Early Childhood Australia (ECA) is working to inform the Victorian early childhood education and care sector about the Child Information Sharing Scheme (CISS)—to promote the wellbeing and safety of children. This blog explains the CISS and how services—known as Information Sharing Entities (ISEs)—can utilise the scheme, and why sharing information matters. It also includes a case…
Engaging children in a conversation on active supervision Active supervision of children is an integral part of quality early childhood education and care. Educators fulfil their essential ethical and professional responsibilities to ensure that children are safe, secure and positively included in experiences that maximise their learning and development. Educators are made aware of this…
English is not the first language of many families in Australia, with 21% of Australians speaking a language other than English at home (ABS, 2017). Today, Australia is one of the top 10 countries in the world where the most languages are spoken (Eberhard et al., 2022). This will probably not surprise early childhood educators,…
Image provided by author, Amy Rothe. Australian early learning settings follow a play-based pedagogy, in line with the emphasis placed on play in the national frameworks. Music is not a core part of this pedagogy, perhaps because of the perception that music education is about rote instruction, practising scales and reading notation—compared to play-based learning,…
Nourishing bodies and relationships: Ritualising and celebrating slow mealtimesIt’s fair to say that many educators would use the descriptor ‘busy’ to describe their days with children. With workdays full of routine care mechanics like feeding, toileting and nappy changing, educators turn to an efficient ‘task driven’ mode of care that sees success and achievement as…
In the lead up to National Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June) and in celebration of the 2022 theme ‘Be Brave. Make Change’, we reached out to Aboriginal artist and early childhood professional, Emma Stenhouse to share part of her journey, experiences and wisdom. Emma describes herself as Indigenous artisan, Ngarrindjeri woman, artist, waver,…
This blog post from The Hon Stuart Robert MP, Acting Minister for Education and Youth, follows the federal election candidates forum with cross-party leaders co-hosted by ECA on 2 May 2022. Each candidate was invited to share their policies and plans to support Australian children if their party wins this federal election. If you missed…
In case you missed all the action from Early Childhood Australia’s Federal Election 2022 Candidates Forum, here is a quick summary to bring you up to speed because #EarlyLearningMatters this election. ECA’s Federal Election 2022 Candidates Forum saw key election candidates responsible for early childhood portfolio engage with the early childhood education and care (ECEC)…
This 2022 federal election we are calling on candidates across politics to support high quality early learning access, affordability, inclusion and stability for every child. On 2 May 2022 we invited cross-party leaders with early childhood portfolio responsibility to a virtual forum to share their policies and plans to support Australian children if their party…
This 2022 federal election we are calling on candidates across politics to support high quality early learning access, affordability, inclusion and stability for every child. On 2 May 2022 we invited cross-party leaders with early childhood portfolio responsibility to a virtual forum to share their policies and plans to support Australian children if their party…