A $$$ Allowance for Educational Leaders

Allowance for Educational Leaders in Early Childhood Services

Good news for Educational Leaders!

From the 1^st of this month, Educational Leaders will receive an allowance of $4,022.05 ($2.03 per hour for full-time Educational Leaders). For part-time Educational Leaders, the annual allowance will be paid pro-rata for the number of days per week you are in the role of Educational Leader. All qualified Educational Leaders holding a Certificate III or Diploma that are responsible for Educational Leader duties will be eligible.

Educational Leader Under the Law

Regulation 118 of the Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011

“The approved provider of an education and care service must designate, in writing, a suitably qualified and experienced educator, co-ordinator or another individual as an educational leader at the service to lead the development and implementation of educational programs in the service.”

National Quality Standards

QA7.2 Leadership

“Effective leadership builds and promotes a positive organisational culture and professional learning community.”

“The educational leader is supported and leads the development and implementation of the educational program and assessment and planning cycle.” (QA7.2.2 Educational Leadership)

QA1 Educational Program and Practice

“The educational program enhances each child’s learning and development.” (QA1.1)

“Educators facilitate and extend each child’s learning and development.” (QA1.2)

“Educators and co-ordinators take a planned and reflective approach to implementing the program for each child.” (QA1.3)

What are the Responsibilities of an Educational Leader

As an Educational Leader, it is your responsibility to motivate and educate your team members on how to provide a quality Educational Program and Practice. This could look like:

• Supporting your team in implementing their educational program and cycle of planning and assessment.
• Providing suggestions and resources to improve the educational program and assessments for children.
• Remaining informed and engaging in reflective discussions on approved learning frameworks, theorists, pedagogies, standards, and reflections to apply to your service’s program and practice.
• Promoting critical reflection by creating an ongoing cycle of reviewing, assessing, and generating new ideas to engage in continuous improvement.
• Putting in place a system that is clear for documenting assessments, pedagogy, practice, and reflections and is guided by compliance and best practice.
• Forming a system for appraising staff, providing feedback, and working together to promote continuous improvement.
• Supporting educators in their professional development with mentoring and internal and external professional development opportunities tailored to build on their strengths and weaknesses.
• Supporting families and the community to be a part of the educational program and practice by talking with them, gathering feedback, identifying goals, and working together for quality improvement.
• Assisting your staff in sharing their program and practice with families through mentoring on communication and ensuring documentation is easy to read, understand, and contribute to.
• Sharing the importance of play-based learning and learning strategies for the early years with families.
• Working collaboratively with your team to build a success educational program together.

How we can Help you as Educational Leader

The role of Educational Leader is not an easy one and holds a lot of responsibility. We understand and have developed the Educational Leader Diary to help support you in your everyday role with prompts and by capturing documentation of your practices.

We have based our Educational Leader Diary on Approved Learning Frameworks, the National Quality Standards, Theorists, Developmental Milestones, and Exceeding Themes so we could provide an evidence-based resource for you.

Our Educational Leader Diary was designed to:

• Reduce paperwork while capturing all the documentation you need
• Keep all your evidence together in one place
• Be simple and easy to use
• Prompt and inspire you to cover your responsibilities
• Evidence the National Quality Standards
• Reduce and simplify compliance confusion
• Promote and support quality improvement

The Educational Leader Diary supports with general compliance under NQS:

• With an evidence record for NQS reflective discussions and QIP notes
• By encouraging reflection and goal setting supported by compliance overview pages
• With a summary of NQS and a weekly checklist that ensures staff have a clear understanding
• By assisting you in meeting your educational leader responsibilities with a consistent process for working with rooms, educators, and families
• Supporting you in making decisions around Approved Learning Frameworks,
• Considering Dewey, Bronfenbrenner, and NQS in its design,
• Prompting you in the National Quality Standards that encourage physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and language development,
• Linking with the three exceeding themes; Embedded in Service Operations, Informed by Critical Reflection, and Shaped by Meaningful Engagement with Families and Community.

It also covers the following standards:

• 1.1.1 Approved Learning Framework
• 1.1.2 Child-centred
• 1.1.3 Program learning opportunities
• 1.2.1 Intentional teaching
• 1.2.2 Responsive teaching and scaffolding
• 1.2.3 Child directed learning
• 1.3.1 Assessment and planning cycle
• 1.3.2 Critical reflection
• 1.3.3 Information for families
• 2.1 Health
• 2.2 Safety
• 2.2.3 Child protection
• 3.1.1 Fit for purpose
• 3.1.2 Upkeep
• 3.2.3 Environmentally responsible
• 4.1.1 Organisation of educators
• 4.1.2 Continuity of staff
• 4.2.1 Professional collaboration
• 4.2.2 Professional standards
• 5.1 Relationships between educators and children
• 5.2 Relationships between children
• 6.1.1 Engagement with the service
• 6.1.2 Parent views are respected
• 6.2.2 Access and participation
• 6.2.3 Community engagement
• 7.1.1 Service philosophy and purpose
• 7.1.2 Management systems
• 7.1.3 Roles and responsibilities
• 7.2.1 Continuous improvement
• 7.2.2 Educational leadership
• 7.2.3 Development of professionals

You can download the complete Educational Leader Diary Compliance Information ebook here.

Supporting you to Support your Team

A huge part of your role as Educational Leader is providing your team with resources and tools to apply an effective cycle of planning and assessment of learning. To support you in doing that, we have developed tools to enable your team to implement an effective program and practice.

We have diaries to support quality programming and critical reflection for all services types. This includes a Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary for your indoor program and a Central Outdoor Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary to promote continuity of learning and practice when outdoors.

To cover key areas of NQS and Approved Learning Frameworks, we have our special interest calendars. These include the Our Sustainable Year Calendar and Our Culturally Responsible Year Calendar. We also offer a range of tools to promote key compliance areas and support your staff in their roles, such as Play-Based Learning Tools for children and Knowledge-Based Resources for staff.

For your team’s assessments of learning, we have an Individual Observations Duplicate Book that works in conjunction with the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary. We also have a Journals to engage children to participate in their assessments of learning and capture their learning.

You can download compliance information books to assist you in identifying how these resources enable you to meet your compliance requirements. Just head to the product page, scroll to look inside and download the compliance information e-book. They include Look Inside pages so you can see what is included in every diary.

For more support, get in touch with our team!