Education and Care Services

The 2023-24 financial year at Lady Gowrie Tasmania (LGT) has been a year of change and growth for our Education and Care Team, with our collective focus turned towards strengthening our foundations and ensuring all educators, managers and support staff have opportunities to learn and grow as professionals and to become better connected to the wider Education and Care Team and organisation.

The Education and Care sector has continued to experience ongoing transformation with changes to legislation, the National Quality Framework, Assessment and Rating processes, ACECQA curriculum documents, as well as sector-wide governmental reviews and reports.

Our service delivery teams, service support teams, as well as the Education and Care Leadership Team and Educational Leaders, have continued to face the ongoing change and challenge in our sector head on, always keeping great outcomes for children at the centre of all that they do.

Despite the challenges that change brings, our Education and Care Team have continued to shine, leading the way in early and middle childhood services across Tasmania.

September 2023 saw the opening of our beautiful Penna Road Education and Care Service catering for children from three to five years of age, allowing our original Midway Point Education and Care Service to become a birth to 3-year-old service providing almost double the amount of early childhood places in the Midway Point community.

We expanded our Outside School Hours Care offering, welcoming John Paul II to our partner schools and working together to open a Before and After School Care and a Vacation Care program for this local school community.

LGT continued to partner with the Department for Education, Children and Young People expanding the Working Together program into another 6 LGT services and accommodating an additional 24 places for children who might not otherwise attend an early learning service.

We were successful in securing minor infrastructure grants for 6 of our services allowing LGT to make upgrades to playgrounds and buildings throughout the state, knowing that service environments support play and learning for children.

We improved the quality of education and care for children in our services by introducing Educational Leaders to our services with the intention of providing pedagogical support for every educator; appointing Service Managers in our regional services ensuring that our regional teams are supported and guided by onsite leaders; implementing statewide educator meetings; introducing Assistant Manager professional development days and trainee supervisor training; and providing opportunities for every educator to access professional development through online training and the Early Childhood Australia learning hub to ensure that our educators are connected and have ongoing opportunities to learn and grow. 

Service teams have been proudly involved in supporting the new generation of educators with over 90 trainees employed in our services and through our partnership with the Beacon Foundation, being involved in panels within schools where we have shared knowledge and experiences as well as facilitating many work placements through the year.

I know that the coming year will be another busy year, but I know that we are up to the challenge. I am exceptionally proud to work with such an inspiring team of professionals who provide high quality education and care and who are passionate about supporting children and families.  Thank you for your amazing work.

Our Education and Care Services played a significant role in supporting children and families through one of the 19 Long Day Care services, 22 Outside School Hours Care services and 1 Preschool program. This is evidenced during the reporting period where LGT Education and Care Services supported: