An objective of the National Quality Framework (NQF) is to encourage continuous quality improvement in education and care services and provide families with better information for making choices about their children’s education and care.

 

Assessing Practice

 

An effective self-assessment involves reflection on each Quality Area in the National Quality Standard (NQS). It requires reflection and evaluation on service practice, policies and procedures to assist you to confirm minimum legislative compliance requirements are met, and whether the service is meeting the NQS. To support your understanding of the NQS and to help you self-assess, the Guide to the National Quality Framework includes a set of reflective questions for each NQS Quality Area and guidance for the exceeding themes.

 

Within each quality area it is important to capture:

 

1. Regulatory Compliance – analysing ‘what you do’ against the National Law and Regulations. Where regulatory requirements are assessed as ‘Non-compliant', immediate steps must be taken to rectify the non-compliance.

2. Strengths – recording typical practices that make you proud and that you would like to showcase against the elements and standards. Your service’s key practices should reflect what you do at your service. When developing your key practice statements, consider how the authorised officer will confirm this practice (will they be able to sight, observe or discuss?). If not, think about how you could reframe this to make your practice visible. It’s important that your evidence/practice informs your self-assessment, rather than making an assessment and looking for evidence to support the outcome you’re looking for.

3. Areas for improvement – identify potential areas for improving practices.

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