Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Development

Summary of Responses to Consultation

We actively sought feedback from young people, parents and families, teachers, principals and other school staff, child care workers, maternal and child health nurses, kindergarten teachers, and local community organisations. With over 180 responses, many people generously gave their time and ideas to help refine the reform proposals. 

Consultation Report

The Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Consultation Report summarises the key themes emerging from the consultations. Together with further research and advice from international experts, the consultation feedback has been invaluable in helping to shape the final Blueprint.

See: Blueprint for Education and Early Childhood Consultation Report (PDF - 185Kb)

Summary

Broadly, there was strong support for the reform directions, particularly the 0-18 approach and the importance  placed on children and young people being at the centre of any reform. There was also a clear sense that much good practice already exists and can be built on.

Respondents expressed a desire for more details about the proposals and how they might be resourced and implemented. There was also a view that there could be a stronger focus on disadvantage, social inclusion, cultural diversity and rural/ regional concerns.

In the early childhood sector, feedback highlighted the importance of integration and the distinction between this and co-location. Respondents also emphasised the importance of play based learning, workforce issues, the crucial role of local government in providing early childhood services, and the need for State and local planning to align more closely.

In the schools sector, there was strong support for closer partnerships with non-government schools. Feedback also highlighted issues around measuring performance of schools and staff and the form that interventions and support might take. There was very positive feedback on empowering principals to deal with underperforming staff, enhancing the status of the profession and lifting standards of pre service training, and greater recognition of the important roles played by non-teaching staff.

Across both sectors, there was very strong support for a 0-8 learning and development framework and for maximising opportunities for the early childhood and school sectors to learn from one another. There was consistent agreement about the importance of engaging with parents, families and communities, although some concerns were expressed about a potential increase in staff workload. Feedback also strongly supported closer links with communities and providing more and better information to parents.

Submissions

Following are the submissions received from the consultations.

Online submissions

Emailed submissions

For a listing of the individuals and organisations who submitted email responses to the Discussion Papers, see Index to Email Respondents (PDF - 129Kb)

Emailed responses have been collated together in a series of PDF documents, grouped alphabetically: