As part of its latest round of October 2019 roadshows, the NSW Department of Education has announced that for services who are about to have their Assessment & Rating, they will be invited to "opt-in" to use ACECQA's Self-Assessment Tool that was released in March 2019 until it is fully incorporated beginning February 2020.
Currently, when services are notified, they will receive an e-mail (see sample) suggesting that between now and February 2020, it will be an opt-in feature. It is unclear how the Assessment and Rating would be affected if services do not opt-in.
The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW who attended as many of the NSW Department of Education's roadshows as possible has expressed concern that the Self-assessment Tool could be misused to "game" the Assessment & Rating process in order to seek higher ratings by providing certain kinds of information in those forms to influence the Authorised Officer before their visit.
Moreover, given the NSW Department of Education's historical stance that they are a Regulatory Authority (ie with a focus on compliance), ACA NSW is wondering why services who may not be compliant or are uncertain of whether they are compliant or not on some aspect(s) of the National Law and National Regulations would volunteer such information, thereby undermining the use of the Self-Assessment Tool.
ACA NSW is aware of the processes and collaborative culture between services and the then NSW Department of Families and Community Services prior to the National Law and National Regulations.
Nevertheless, ACA NSW will communicate its concerns to the NSW Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning (the Hon Sarah Mitchell MLC) about the use of ACECQA's Self-Assessment Tool in the context of services' Assessments and Ratings.
(NOTE: NSW currently has 1,329 services out of 5,506 that are currently rated Working Towards the NQS. 777 of the 1,329 NSW-based services who are currently listed as Working Towards the NQS were last rated between 2013 and 2017.)
PUBLISHED: 16 OCTOBER 2019