Goodstart’s practice uplift results in improved learning environments

Goodstart is proud of our continuous journey of quality improvement across all our centres, just like at Goodstart Currumbin Waters, to deliver the best learning outcomes for all children. 

Goodstart Currumbin Waters is rated an Exceeding centre and recently won Goodstart’s 2022 National Goodies Award for Enabling Environments - Most Improved. The centre team won this highly coveted award for demonstrating exceptional improvements to their centre environments to extend children’s learning and development.

Sue Robb, Goodstart’s General Manager of Pedagogy and Practice said early learning makes the biggest impact on a child’s development when it’s high quality and is the cornerstone of the organisation's ongoing investment in its practice uplift journey. 

“We’re for making every moment count for children and this is about ensuring high quality early learning and teaching and enriching learning environments,” Sue said.

“While Goodstart centres are exceeding the sector average with more than 98.2% of centres Meeting or Exceeding the National Quality Standard, we’re always looking to do more.

“Goodstart Currumbin Waters is a shining example of a centre team who work tirelessly to reflect on their everyday practice against best practice. For this team, improving their enabling environments to promote and extend children’s learning has been a key focus over the past 12 months.”

Enabling environments – indoors and outdoors – promote and extend children’s interests and engagement to maximise their learning and development. Great enabling environments have been intentionally considered to support teaching and learning for all children and provide opportunities for both planned and spontaneous teaching and learning.  

“This centre has created wonderful enabling environments where children’s voices sing through their choice of materials and resources and their display.”

Practice uplift journey takes take at Goodstart Currumbin Waters

Over a 12-month journey, the team challenged themselves to reflect on their current ways of working and created a strategy to excel across all learning environments in the centre. 

This began with the team embracing the internationally renowned Environmental Rating Scales (ERS) - adopted by Goodstart centres, and through self-assessment they could see opportunities for improvement such as integrating more literacy and numeracy into their physical environments.

The team attributes their improvements to ERS and Goodstart’s wrap-around-support to upskill educators and teachers, including access to evidence-informed practice.

 Sonia Rodrigue, Kindergarten Teacher at Goodstart Currumbin Waters said that whole centre was proud to receive the award and to be acknowledged for their hard work.  

“Environments are the third teacher, and it sets the scene for whatever happens with children's learning,” Sonia said. 

“We aim to ensure that every child can be engaged (and now) they're wanting to learn, they're listening and they're having these great conversations and great engagement with the learning materials and that's what validates that that we’re doing a good job.

“The award (national Goodies award) was the icing on the cake, it gave the whole centre such an uplift and a feeling of joy and appreciation from the company (Goodstart).” 

Hear for yourself the impact of winning the award meant to Sonia and the team last year in this 1-minute video:

Practice uplift at Goodstart – fast facts

• More than 98% of Goodstart centres are Meeting or Exceeding the National Quality Standard – leading the way for the long day care and exceeding the early learning sector average
• Goodstart is investing in world class research about what works best for children's learning
• Goodstart invested more than $19M in training and development in FY22
• Goodstart centres universally use two environmental rating scales, The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales – Extension (ECERS-E) and Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Well-being (SSTEW) to support quality and practice improvement within our centres. 

To learn more about our Goodstart difference and hear what our educators and teachers love about working for Goodstart, visit the news section of our website here.