A toolkit designed to help schools use AEDC data to inform planning of early childhood programs and encourage engagement with the broader early childhood community is making a difference.
Every three years, the Australian Early Development Census collects information on children’s physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language, cognitive and communication skills, and general knowledge.
But up until now, many school administrations had failed to see how they could use this data to help make a difference for children’s education. Education departments around Australia were seeking to support their educators and leaders to use the AEDC data in their planning.
A research-policy-practice partnership was developed to tackle the challenge. Dr Yasmin Harman-Smith and her team from the Fraser Mustard Centre worked with policy makers, early childhood and school leaders and educators to develop a suite of resources that spoke the language of schools and connected the AEDC to their core business.
Dr Harman-Smith, who is Deputy Director of the Centre, said the toolkit helped school leaders understand and use the data – a real snapshot of the development of children in the community – rather than make assumptions about their communities based on socio- economic status.
“The AEDC tells us what happened for children before school, and effectively predicts how they’re going to go once they get to school,” Dr Harman-Smith said. “A child vulnerable in one domain is twice as likely to fall behind their peers once they start school.”
She said some schools hadn’t understood how the census information could help them, in partnership with other organisations, better prepare children for success at school. The new resources, however, had helped them to bridge the divide between the early years and the schooling years.
“The data shows us what are the contexts children are living in, and how to make education planning more nuanced towards meeting the beliefs and needs of the community,” Dr Harman-Smith said.
“The education becomes valuable, meaningful, culturally and contextually specific.”
Dr Harman-Smith’s team researched current practice and understandings of the AEDC to inform the development of the resources for school use.
Three schools in Queensland were chosen to trial them, while resources were also developed for schools and early care organisations in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales.
“These resources will be used by school leadership teams and prep teachers to continue to support children’s early learning and development and transition to school, making links with the Australian Curriculum and other relevant schooling policy frameworks,” Dr Harman-Smith said.
The resources would enhance continuity between early learning environments and prep, and support efforts to focus on holistic early childhood development across all five AEDC domains in the prep year. They helped align the AEDC to age-appropriate teaching pedagogies and would demonstrate the value of the AEDC in school planning and programming for all schooling sectors.
Dr Harman-Smith said school administrators often needed support to work out how best to use the data, to fit in with what they already did in terms of planning supports for children and families.
“When kids get to school there’s this totally different world that they’re expected to fit into, and in the early years there is this very different philosophy and approach to children,” she said.
“In the early years it is all about growing these little people – being, belonging and becoming. When they get to school it’s all about literacy and numeracy.”
The new toolkit would help organisations bridge that divide.
The Fraser Mustard Centre is a joint initiative between The Kids Research Institute Australia and the South Australian Department for Education.
Read more about the impact of the AEDC toolkit
