The proportion of children who are enrolled in, and attending, a preschool program in the year before full-time schooling.

Proportions are calculated for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.

Presentation: Percentage.

100 x (Numerator ÷ Denominator)

Measure (a): The number of children who are enrolled in a preschool program in the year before full-time schooling.

Measure (b): The number of children attending a preschool program (for at least one hour in the reference period) in the year before full-time schooling.

The numerator is obtained by summing all children who reported for Measure (a), a ‘Yes’ response against the data element ‘Child—early childhood education program enrolment indicator, yes/no code N’, and for Measure (b), a ‘Yes’ response against the data element ‘Child—early childhood education program attendance indicator, yes/no code N’.

Measure (a): The estimated number of children in the year before full-time schooling (based on adjusted potential population* age in months relating to school starting provisions in each state/territory).

*Potential population:

• Jurisdictions with wider age cohorts of children in the ‘year’ before full-time schooling —the number of children already in full-time schooling has been subtracted from the revised population estimates to create a cohort of children who could be in an early childhood education program (ECEP) prior to attending school the following year.
• Jurisdictions with early school starters — counts of children aged 4 years who are enrolled in school (early starters) have been subtracted from the population denominator.
• Adjusted population — adjusted population projections of Indigenous children aged 4 years in 2015 take account of the undercount for those aged 0 years at the time of the 2011 Census of Population and Housing. This method replaced the 2015 projection of the 4 year old Indigenous population with the average of the 4 year old population projection for 2014 and 2016.

Measure (b): The number of children enrolled in a preschool program in the year before full-time schooling.

Current Period (2015):

Measure a):

• State and Territory, and nationally by Indigenous status

Measure b):

• Nationally by remoteness, by Indigenous status (Remoteness areas are Major cities; Inner/Outer regional areas; Remote/Very remote areas).
• State and Territory and nationally, by Indigenous status

Time series—not applicable (first time these Measures have been reported).

Collection of data involves alignment of the numerator and denominator by:

• for attendance and enrolment place of usual residence—child is counted where they reside, not by where the provider is located (where insufficient information on the child’s address was collected, where no address details have been provided, or no unit record level information exists—remoteness area is to be assigned using the address of the service at which the child is enrolled, according to the Remoteness Structure of the ABS Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS)).
• for enrolment only treatment of not stated Indigenous status—Indigenous count includes addition of a share of children enrolled with a not stated Indigenous status in proportion to the ratio of children enrolled with known Indigenous status. (For attendance not stated Indigenous status is excluded from the numerator).

This performance indicator should use child level data excluding repeaters where available, calculated using a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) which provides a unique identifier for the majority of children.

Currently, some records in the National Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Collection are produced from aggregate data rather than at the unique child level.  Where no child level data are available, counts of preschool episodes are to be used.

Where available, the count of ‘Children in a preschool program in the year before full-time schooling’ (YBFS) is to be used. This count includes all children aged 4 and 5 years who were enrolled in and attended an early childhood education program in the YBFS for the first time in the collection year (that is, excluding 5 year old children who were enrolled in and attended more than one year of a preschool program).

Where YBFS is not available, the count of ‘Children in a preschool program in the calendar year’ (‘Children in 2015’) is to be used. This count includes all children aged 4 and 5 years old that were enrolled in and attended a preschool program in the collection year. A child is included in this count regardless of whether they also attended a preschool program in a previous year (that is, including children who were enrolled in and attended more than one year of a preschool program).

For more information on creating unique child records from child episode data, including how to treat multiple enrolments and repeat enrolments over time, see Chapter 3 of ABS 2013.

NN[N].N

Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Specification: Long-term.

Further improvements are required to provide comparable YBFS data for all states and territories. Further work on the quality of attendance data will improve the quality of these data.

Further work is required to provide appropriate sub-state population counts for the denominator.

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2013. National Early Childhood Education and Care Collection: Concepts, Sources and Methods. ABS Cat. no. 4240.0.55.001. Canberra: ABS.