What to Look for in a Quality Preschool Program: A Parent's Guide
Choosing a preschool or long day care preschool program for your child is one of the biggest decisions you'll make in their early years — and it's natural to feel a little overwhelmed by the options in and around Taree. The good news is that Australia has some of the most well-researched early childhood frameworks in the world, so there's a clear, evidence-based checklist you can use. Here's what Australian research and regulation say to look for, and how it shows up in day-to-day life at Faith Family Early Learning Taree.
1. A program that follows the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF)
Every approved early learning service in Australia works within the Early Years Learning Framework — Belonging, Being and Becoming — the national curriculum developed to guide educators from birth to five years. The EYLF sets out five learning outcomes: a strong sense of identity, connection to and contribution to the world, a strong sense of wellbeing, confidence as a learner, and effective communication. A genuinely high-quality centre can explain how a specific activity connects back to these outcomes and can show you how they document and share your child's progress against them. If a centre can't clearly describe how their day supports your child's learning, that's worth asking more about.
2. Play-based learning that's intentional, not just occupied time
The EYLF is built around the principle that children learn best through play, and early childhood research backs this in: high-quality programs are consistently linked to rich play opportunities, engaging materials, and educators who intentionally extend learning as it happens rather than simply supervising it. What matters most isn't just that children are playing, but that educators are actively shaping the environment, asking open-ended questions, and gently extending children's thinking while keeping them in the lead.
At Faith Family, our program is built around each child's individual interests, strengths and abilities, with educators trained to intentionally extend learning through everyday play.
3. A National Quality Standard (NQS) rating you can actually check
Since 2012, every long day care, preschool and kindergarten in Australia has been assessed and rated against the National Quality Standard by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA). Services are rated across seven quality areas and given an overall rating, from Significant Improvement Required through to Excellent. This gives families a nationally consistent way to compare services, rather than relying on word of mouth alone. It's worth checking a centre's current NQS rating on the ACECQA national register before you enrol, and asking what they're doing to keep improving in any area.
4. Qualified educators and healthy educator-to-child ratios
Educator qualifications and ratios are two of the most heavily regulated — and most researched — indicators of quality in Australian early learning, because they directly affect how much individual attention, warm interaction and language exposure each child receives. The NQS sets minimum ratios by age (for example, a maximum of 1 educator to 11 children aged three to five), but consistency of relationships matters just as much as the ratio on paper. Children do best when they build trust with familiar, qualified educators over time, rather than experiencing frequent staff turnover.
Our educators are qualified and experienced, and our approach is guided by the Circle of Security framework, which helps each child develop a genuine sense of belonging, acceptance and emotional security — the foundation on which trusting educator relationships are built. Our team also takes part in ongoing professional development to keep strengthening the program.
5. A real focus on wellbeing, not just academics
EYLF Outcome 3 — children have a strong sense of wellbeing — covers physical health, emotional regulation, safety and resilience, and research treats it as inseparable from a child's ability to learn. The Australian Early Development Census (AEDC), which tracks children's development nationally, includes social competence and emotional maturity as two of its five core domains for measuring how ready children are for school. Programs that build emotional skills into everyday routines — naming feelings, practising turn-taking, offering predictable structure — tend to see the strongest outcomes in behaviour, peer relationships and school readiness later on.
This relational, wellbeing-first approach sits at the heart of how we work at Faith Family, where emotional security is treated as the foundation for everything else a child learns.
6. Outdoor, open-ended and nature-based play
EYLF Outcome 2 encourages children to connect with their world, including the natural environment, and Australian early childhood practice increasingly emphasises open-ended, nature-based play for building problem-solving, risk-assessment and gross motor skills. Loose parts and natural materials give children room to explore and investigate in ways that structured indoor activities alone can't replicate.
Our outdoor learning spaces are filled with open-ended resources and natural materials, giving children the freedom to explore, discover, take risks and investigate the world around them.
7. Health, nutrition and safety woven into the program
Physical wellbeing — nutrition, movement and safety — is one of the explicit components of EYLF Outcome 3, not a separate add-on to "real" learning. In NSW specifically, many services support this through the NSW Health Munch and Move program, which promotes healthy eating and physical activity habits from an early age.
We support this with the Munch and Move program, healthy meals prepared fresh on-site by our in-house cook, and sun-safe practices including hats, sunscreen and shaded outdoor areas.
8. Genuine connection to community and culture
The EYLF's guiding principles include respect for diversity and building secure, reciprocal relationships with families and communities — and research on child development consistently shows that a strong sense of identity and belonging is protective for children's social and emotional wellbeing, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Look for a centre that embeds local culture and community connection authentically, rather than as a token activity once a year.
At Faith Family, we walk alongside families as a community grounded in faith and Christian values, and we work with the local community to embed authentic Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, acknowledging the Biripi people as Traditional Custodians of the land on which we learn and play in Taree.
Bringing it all together
When you're comparing preschool programs, it helps to ask direct questions: What's your current NQS rating? How do you plan for play against the EYLF outcomes? How do you support my child's wellbeing, not just their academic skills? How do you build community connection? A confident, specific answer to each of these is a strong sign of quality — and it's exactly what we aim to offer every family who walks through our doors in Taree.
If you'd like to see our program in action, we'd love to have you visit. Book a tour of Faith Family Early Learning Taree to see how play-based learning, qualified educators and a genuine sense of community come together for your child.
