New Award Category

2024 Outstanding Education and Care Program Award

“Evidence-based practice for continuous improvement” is the theme for the 2024 Outstanding Education and Care Program Award.

Element 7.2.1 of the National Quality Standard states that services are to have “an effective self-assessment and quality improvement process in place”.

The “critical reflection and ongoing professional learning” principle of the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia states:

“As professional, educators are committed to lifelong learning and to seek out opportunities to strengthen their professional knowledge and skills to support continuous quality improvement in practice” and that educators “look for evidence-informed learning experiences that support deep learning, critical reflection and practice change”.

The 2024 Outstanding Education and Care Program award seeks to celebrate services who have demonstrated excellence in evidence-based practice to improve the quality of their service provision.

Eligibility

The early childhood education and care service or program must:

  • be demonstrating excellence in evidence-based practice to improve the quality of the overall service or a specific program.
  • be led by at least one early childhood educator or teacher who holds an ACECQA approved early childhood qualification.
  • be located in the Northern Territory.
  • cater for children aged from birth to 5 years (12 years for OSHC services).
  • be an outside school hours care, long day care, family day care, kindergarten, preschool, playgroup, Families as First Teachers or other service type that is not part of a formal schooling program from the year Transition onwards.
  • ensure this nomination is endorsed by the supervisor or service provider.

How to nominate

The nomination process is easy.  Simply go online to Nominations and complete the online nomination form.

  1. Describe the program and how it demonstrates excellence, including what the intentions of your program are, and the long term benefits for your children.
  2. Describe how staff;
    - worked collaboratively to research, plan and implement the program, and
    - consulted with stakeholders such as children, families and community.
  3. Describe the program activities.
  4. Describe how you are evaluating the program and outline how children are benefiting from participation including what outcomes are being observed.
  5. What reflective practice has the service implemented, or is planning to implement, based on learnings from the implementation of this program?

Evidence

Shortlisted nominations will be required to provide evidence to the judging panel that demonstrates the programs delivery and evaluation. This could include: photographs, videos, work samples and educator evaluations.

Permissions

Services and programs must ensure that they have written permission from parents and staff to share documentation of the program with the NT Education and Care Awards. This documentation may be used at the Award Ceremony and for promotional purposes on the NT Education and Care Awards Website.