Would you support PARTIAL assessments & ratings?

Partial Assessments & Ratings (A&Rs) already exist since 2018 via the NSW Department of Education's collaboration with ACECQA in their Quality Support Program.

Under the abovementioned Quality Support Program, registered/invited NSW-based services who were at the time rated Working Towards would undergo support and training, followed by A&Rs for only a subset of those services’ Quality Areas that were Working Towards the National Quality Standards (NQS) so that they could be re-rated overall as at least Meeting the NQS.

Moreover, Regulatory Authorities do also allow for re-assessment and re-rating for one or more Quality Areas (see National Law's Section 139) upon payment of fees set by ACECQA ranging from $494 (for a centre-based service with 24 or less places) to $931 (for a centre-based service with 81 or more places).

Especially given the challenges with labour shortages and COVID fatigue, would your service support "partial A&Rs" instead of full/normal/periodic A&Rs such that the Authorised Officer(s) focus only on a subset of your service’s Quality Area(s) (ie not all 7 Quality Areas), and then update/publish your overall rating after including the changes to that sub-set of Quality Areas?

Feedback to ACA NSW's survey (click here OR below the button below) (due 11.59 pm on Friday, 6 June 2022) is sought regarding the above scenario of the expansion of "Partial A&Rs" being either in part or in full replacement of normal/regular A&Rs.

By way of reference, the following table shows the number of assessments & ratings in NSW:

Source: Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA)

For any further information/clarification, please contact the ACA NSW team via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au.

FIRST PUBLISHED: 9 MAY 2022

UPDATED: 30 AUGUST 2022