Our Vision

Goodstart was founded by a partnership of four of Australia’s leading charities who recognised a child’s early years experiences had a huge influence on the rest of their lives — The Benevolent Society, The Brotherhood of St Laurence, Mission Australia, and Social Ventures Australia.

For more than a decade Goodstart, as a not-for-profit social enterprise, has been creating positive social change by giving Australia’s children, especially our most vulnerable, the best possible start in life through access to high quality early learning and care. 

Today, Goodstart is Australia’s largest provider of early learning and care and Australia’s largest non-government provider of preschool and kindergarten programs. 

We employ more than 15,800 employees including 2000 teachers and provide high quality early learning to more than 61,400 children across over 654 centres nation-wide.  

Around one third of our centres are in rural and regional areas and around one quarter are in low socio-economic areas.

Our Vision and Purpose

Our Vision is for Australia’s children to have the best possible start in life.

Our Purpose is to ensure children have the learning, development and wellbeing outcomes they need for school and life.  

Our Guiding Principles

• Children are central to everything we do.
• Our people make the difference.
• Families are our primary partner.
• Being a valued member of each unique community.

Our ambition

Our Strategic Goals (2025-2029) represent the next phase in our journey to further deliver on our purpose. Over the next five years, we’re doubling down on what matters most. We’re not just imagining what’s possible – we’re making it real. 

• World class early learning outcomes, delivered at scale: We will uplift quality across every service, build greater capability to support children with additional needs and monitor and evaluate the impact of our work to deliver better outcomes for all children 
• A team of the very best, united by purpose: We will invest in capability, nurture wellbeing and grow the professionalism of our people in the knowledge that boosting our people strength will have a positive flow-on effect and lead to improved outcomes for children
• A strong and reliable operational foundation: We will improve performance across every function and service to strengthen our business so we can invest more into children, families, our people and our social purpose 
• Every child, in every place, thriving: We will develop scalable, integrated approaches and secure funding sources to deliver more wrap-around services for those children who need it the most 
• Every family able to access high quality early learning: We will ensure more families have the choice of a high quality provider by growing our own footprint in areas of greatest need and advocating for more favourable policy settings that enable broader not-for-profit growth

Learn more about who we are and The Goodstart Story.