Episodes

This week Lisa and Liam have a brief chat about this weekend's NSW Election, before tackling the Australian National Audit Office's review of the design and implementation of the Government's Child Care Package. We speak to four people in the sector to get a range of views on how well (or not) the Package was delivered.

This week Lisa and Liam chat with activist, artist and researcher Dr Red Ruby Scarlet about why services who work with young children should engage with issues of social justice.

This week we are joined by Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer, who discusses her work as the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellow and developer of the Conceptual PlayLab, an evidence-based model of intentional teaching for early childhood and early primary and an example of world-leading research.

This week Liam chats with Ali Sewter, Kylie Keane and Carl Kroon from Forrest Out of Hours School Care about their recent achievement of receiving the Excellent rating from ACECQA; and Leanne brings us her reflections from Day 2 of the recent AJEC Symposium.

This week Lisa, Leanne and Liam discuss recent advocacy around the numbers of Early Childhood Teachers required in NSW early education services.

Leanne also provides a summary of her time at the recent AJEC Conference.

This week, Lisa and Liam take a look at all the different advocacy campaigns and battles that are happening in 2019 in the early education sector.

In our first episode of 2019, Liam chats with Associate Professor Sandie Wong, Dr Tamara Cumming and Dr Helen Logan about the Early Childhood Educator Wellbeing Project. The Project takes an holistic approach to examine the psychological and physiological aspects of early childhood educators’ well-being within the context of their work environments.

We're back with full episodes on February 8, but this bonus episode gives listeners access to the first episode of our supporter-only series "Exploring the NQS". This weekly series features Liam looking at the National Quality Standard, once a week, one element at a time.

For the third year running we present our end-of-year episode! We provide an overview of the big moments from 2018, make some predictions for what might be to come in 2019, and the answer a few listener questions.

There’s been a flurry of ECEC news in December, and we didn’t want to wait until February to chat about it. Get up to speed with our quick bonus episode!

For our last regular episode of the year, we turn the microphone over to two early childhood education leaders. Wendy Mackay (Centre Director of Harrison Early Childhood Centre) speaks with Anna Whitty (Executive Director, Northside Children’s Services) about leading her centre from a Working Towards rating in 2015, to an Exceeding rating in 2018. The discussion documents the highs and lows of this three-year journey of quality improvement through leadership, self-reflection and professional identity.

This week Lisa and Liam talk about community management of early education services with President of Alstonville Community Preschool Katherine Buckley. Katherine talks to us about Alstonville, how she and the committee work with the Centre Director and what the biggest challenges are for this model.

This week we tackle one of the most exciting and thrilling topics in early education - service policies and procedures! We discuss why they’re actually important, how you can approach them and why they’re actually great resources for you and the work you do.

Lisa, Leanne and Liam are joined this week by Professor Deborah Harcourt to discuss the growing trend of early education environments all having similar looks. Where has this trend come from, and what does it mean for children and educators?

This week Lisa and Liam chat with Charlene Smith from the Mitchell Institute about their new report The Capable Country, which calls for rapid government action to boost capabilities across all stages of learning.

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister Scott Morrison apologised on behalf of the nation  for failing and abandoning the thousands of survivors of institutional child sex abuse. The Apology came after the Royal Commission conducted a years-long investigation into Australia’s failure to keep children safe in many instances.

This week, we take a look at how the Royal Commission and the Apology affects early childhood education services, what it means to be a child-safe organisation and what the Commission’s proposed Child Safe Standards mean for children and the sector.

Lisa and Leanne are taking an extra (well-deserved) week off, so Liam takes a look at the Labor Party's recent early education policy announcements regarding three-year-old preschool and free TAFE places.

He chats about Labor's new policies with the Shadow Education Minister Amanda Rishworth, and then talks with Mitchell Institute Director and policy expert Megan O'Connell to take a deeper look at what they mean for the sector.

This week we briefly discuss the Labor Party’s plans to crackdown on freebies and giveways to families to get more enrolments, before chatting with CEO of Big Fat Smile Jenni Hutchins.

Jenni discusses navigating the compliance and regulatory system as an Approved Provider, supporting Nominated Supervisors with their legal obligations, and how to lead and support an organisation during a prosecution.

This week, we're bringing you the third of a series of conference presentations from the Victorian Government's Realising the Potential Conference.

The presentations this week all fall under the theme of “How do I lead and improve excellence in early learning?” and feature Professor Joce Nuttall, Director of the Teacher Education Research Concentration in the Learning Sciences Institute Australia, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University; Dr Dan Cloney, Research Fellow, Policy Research and Practice, Australian Council for Educational Research; Andrew Hume, Chief Executive Officer, Gowrie Victoria; and Anthony Semann, Semann & Slattery.

You can also check out interviews we conducted with many of the speakers featured here in Episodes 69 and 70 of the podcast.

The audio for this session has been generously provided by the Victorian Department of Education and Training. Find out more at http://www.education.vic.gov.au/ecforum.