Following on from Quality early education for all, this resource looks at how Australia is tracking for process quality. This is the area that grows children’s early literacy, language development, reasoning and problem solving skills. Arguably the most important of the quality areas, process quality focuses on the interactions between staff and children, and teacher-directed learning activities. This paper finds that disadvantaged children are more likely to miss out on high quality ECEC. It also finds that quality varies more for younger children.

Early education benefits all children, especially those who experience disadvantage. We know that early education produces the greatest return when it’s of high quality, but many early childhood services in Australia are not meeting standards. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds – the children who have the most to gain – are less likely to access high quality services than children from higher socio-economic families. In the most disadvantaged areas, services were 10 per cent less likely to meet the key quality benchmark than more advantaged areas.