Early Childhood, Education and Care Capacity Study - Consultation paper

Jobs and Skills Australia role is to engage, advise and assist the Australian Government and other stakeholders in decision-making on the current, emerging and future skills and workforce needs of the Australian economy. Jobs and Skills Australia provides high quality data, analysis, and insights to better understand Australia’s skills and labour shortages across the economy. Jobs and Skills Australia's advice is independent, as per its legislation.

Jobs and Skills Australia is set up to work under a tripartite model, meaning it will work with government at all levels, industry (unions, employers, peak bodies) as well as both the higher education and vocational education and training (VET) sectors. To this end, stakeholder engagement is critical to Jobs and Skills Australia's work and it enables the achievement of our priorities and set deliverables.

HumanAbility is an industry-led organisation contracted by the federal government as the Jobs and Skills Council (JSC) for the Children’s Education and Care, Aged and Disability Health, Human Services and Sport and Recreation industries.

HumanAbility is one of ten JSCs that have been established to provide industry with a stronger voice to ensure Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) sector delivers better outcomes for learners and employers. They bring together employers, unions and governments in a tripartite arrangement to find solutions to skills and workforce challenges.

JSCs will identify skills and workforce needs for their sectors, map career pathways across education sectors, develop contemporary VET training products, support collaboration between industry and training providers to improve training and assessment practice, and act as a source of intelligence on issues affecting their industries.

Workforce planning is the strategic centrepiece underpinning all JSC activities and establishes essential context for each of the other functions. JSCs work closely with Jobs and Skills Australia, drawing on its workforce analysis and projections to plan for their industry sectors and creating a consistent approach to addressing skill gaps.

Key to HumanAbility's approach is ensuring that workforce development and qualifications reviews are both agile and deeply informed by industry needs, achieved through harnessing member networks and newly established Industry Advisory Committees to engage stakeholders effectively.

The study will be undertaken in partnership between Jobs and Skills Australia and HumanAbility in recognition of the unique and complementary roles each organisation brings in relation to workforce planning and analysis. This partnership also provides an opportunity to ensure the capability, skills and expertise of each organisation can be leveraged to ensure the study produces high quality, well considered and accurate findings.

A key focus will be to ensure HumanAbility and Jobs and Skills Australia engage with the sector in a timely and targeted way to inform the final report. This includes ensuring stakeholders are engaged with consistently and meaningfully, alleviating stakeholder fatigue and avoiding the duplication of effort.

The study will make an important contribution to HumanAbility’s 2024 workforce planning which is expected to be completed early in 2024.

Jobs and Skills Australia will report on the interim progress in February 2024 and a final report in May 2024. These reports will be informed by the Terms of Reference.

• October 2023 – Terms of Reference published
• November 2023 – Consultation Paper published
• February 2024 – Jobs and Skills Australia reporting on study interim progress
• March 2024 – HumanAbility’s workforce plan to be published
• May 2024 – Jobs and Skills Australia’s final capacity study report.

Jobs and Skills Australia may collect personal information when you comment on the Early Childhood Education and Care Capacity Study Terms of Reference, or you make a submission or comment in response to our Consultation Paper.

Jobs and Skills Australia is using an online survey tool through a Contracted Service Provider to collect this information.

Please do not include personal information within your submission files (unless necessary).

If Jobs and Skills Australia receives personal information that it has taken no active steps to collect, that information may be treated as unsolicited personal information and will be dealt with in accordance with Jobs and Skills Australia Privacy Policy.

Your name may be used to attribute ownership of your comments or submission unless indicated that you wish to remain anonymous, use a pseudonym, or make a confidential submission. Please note that, if you choose to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym, JSA may place less weight on your submission.

Your email address and contact number may be used by Jobs and Skills Australia to contact you regarding your comments or submission if it is incomplete or inaccessible, or to invite you to participate in a roundtable discussion.

Any other personal information you provide optionally (e.g. gender, origin, language, disability) will be used only by Jobs and Skills Australia for the purpose of the ECEC capacity study, for example, to observe levels of engagement from particular cohorts and to assess whether we need to alter our processes to encourage greater engagement.

Jobs and Skills Australia may disclose personal information to other third parties including but not limited to:

• other Commonwealth agencies with an interest in the Early Childhood Education and Care Capacity Study
• an employee of the Contracted Service Provider of the online survey tool, as part of them providing support services. Personal information will not be disclosed overseas as the provider’s support services are managed by Australian based staff.

Your personal information will not be used or disclosed for any other purpose unless authorised or required by law.

All personal information, for example home address, email address, signatures, phone, mobile and fax numbers will be removed from your submission before it is published on the website.

The Jobs and Skills Australia Privacy Policy contains more information about the way in which we manage your personal information, including information about how you may access your personal information held by Jobs and Skills Australia and seek correction of such information. The Privacy Policy also contains information on how you can make a complaint about a breach of your privacy and how Jobs and Skills Australia will deal with such a complaint.