AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT


DATA QUALITY STATEMENT

In 2011, the Australian Government was responsible for one data collection that enabled data in relation to preschool programs to be reported, the Child Care Management System (CCMS), which collected data at Unit Record Level (URL).

Child Care Management System

Institutional Environment
The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and Centrelink all share responsibility for the operation of the CCMS. FaHCSIA are the data custodians for all data reported through the CCMS. Data from the CCMS for the purposes of the National ECEC Collection are managed by DEEWR. Data for the CCMS are collected under A New Tax System (Family Assistance)(Administration) Act 1999 (Cwlth) and the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 (Cwlth).

Relevance
The CCMS is a national child care computer system that enables child care services to exchange child care information online with the Australian Government. It enables the payment of CCB fee reductions on behalf of parents to approved child care services. It also provides for the collection of information about the supply and usage of child care across Australia. All CCB approved child care service providers are required by law to operate under CCMS.

Child care services use their CCMS registered software to record child demographic, enrolment and attendance information. Services report this data to DEEWR via the internet to allow calculation and payment of CCB fee reductions on behalf of children in their service. Services need to supply this information regularly in order to comply with CCMS regulations.

While the CCMS was not initially designed to collect information about preschool programs in Long Day Care (LDC) centres, the CCMS provides an opportunity to gain such information. From June 2010, enhancements were deployed in the CCMS to capture information on whether a child is attending a preschool program in each LDC, and the hours per week of attendance. Reporting capabilities for this data have been available since 1 September 2010.

Scope: The scope of the CCMS extract for the National ECEC Collection included all children aged 3 to 6 years of age who were enrolled during the reference period at an LDC approved for the purposes of CCB that was providing a preschool program.

Coverage: All services approved for the purposes of CCB were required to provide data through the CCMS. However, LDCs delivering preschool programs were not mandated to complete the preschool program component of the CCMS, which resulted in under-coverage due to non-response. Service providers that were not approved for CCB purposes were not included in the CCMS. Refer to Chapter 1, Collection Scope and Coverage for more information on the strategy undertaken to improve coverage in this sector.

Data collection methods:
The 2011 preschool program component of the CCMS collected data using a URL data collection methodology for the following statistical entities:

• Child: Data at the child record level

• Service provider organisation: Data at the service provider record level

• Worker: Data for workers was not available.

Timeliness
The CCMS involves service providers uploading weekly attendance information for children enrolled at their service. Data were extracted from the system for a collection reference period of 1 to 7 August 2011. Completion of the data processing and validation stage took approximately 2 to 3 months from the collection date, at which time data were delivered to the ABS.

Data sourced from the CCMS for the purposes of the National ECEC Collection are published by the ABS in Experimental Estimates of Preschool Education, Australia, 2011 (cat. no. 4240.0).

Accuracy
Under family assistance law, approved child care services are required to submit certain records such as weekly enrolments and attendance record reports for each child to DEEWR electronically, using child care software registered by FaHCSIA for use with the CCMS. To ensure there are no duplicate enrolments, DEEWR checks dates of birth and Child Record Numbers as well as Service Client Ids so there can only be one current enrolment at a service for the same parent/guardian and child combination.

In September 2011, LDCs previously identified as delivering preschool programs from the National ECEC Workforce Census, were sent information encouraging them to report information about their preschool programs within the CCMS. LDCs were asked to indicate whether the preschool program was delivered at their service (in-house) or at another location, which could include a dedicated standalone preschool (off-site). They were also asked to report information on the number of hours each child spent in the preschool during the reference week. While the recording of child care attendances was a requirement for all service providers, information on a child’s attendance in a preschool program was not always reported as it was not a mandatory field for payment of CCB. Furthermore, as not all services use the same software to record the information into CCMS, the various interfaces used to input to CCMS can influence what is recorded.

The CCMS has a high level of accuracy in reporting information on child demographics (such as name, date of birth and address information) and children’s attendance in child care services, as this information contributes to the provision of CCB. However, some service provider characteristics and information on children’s attendance in preschool programs was subject to a level of service non-response, as the provision of these data by service providers were not mandatory. Data on workers within service providers are also not collected through the CCMS.

The Preschool Provider Frame project undertaken by the ABS identified that a number of service providers listed in the Workforce Census as delivering preschool programs, did not complete the preschool program component of the CCMS. From this analysis, the ABS conducted a survey to confirm the data provided through the CCMS and these results were used to supplement CCMS information. Further details on the Preschool Provider Frame project are outlined in Chapter 1, Collection Scope and Coverage.

Extraction programs captured information from the CCMS data repository and stored information in the FaHCSIA Data Warehouse. At this point, data were examined to ensure that the data in CCMS were consistent with the aggregate data run through a statistical analysis process. CCMS data were then further validated to assess any deviation from expected average values, ranges, distributions, and demographic data. The data were also assessed for frequency and characteristics of LDC services and children attending preschool programs in these services, compared with data from state and territory collections and survey sources.

FaHCSIA provided DEEWR with a data extract from the CCMS to meet reporting requirements. Data for the National ECEC Collection were then extracted from this data file by DEEWR ready for delivery to the ABS.

Coherence
2011 was the first year that data from the CCMS were included in the National ECEC Collection.

The preschool program component of the CCMS was designed to collect data in accordance with the 2010 ECEC National Minimum Data Set (ECEC NMDS) due to the timing of development activities. As a result, there are small discrepancies between the national standards defined in the 2011 ECEC NMDS and the data collected from the CCMS, which are outlined in the following table. Despite this, data sourced from the CCMS are of sufficient quality and comparability to allow it to be used with state and territory data to improve coverage of preschool programs being delivered in the LDC sector.

Data Element	Details of Deviation
Indigenous status	Data were based on the Indigenous status of the person receiving the CCB (i.e. the child’s parent or guardian), not the Indigenous status of the child. It is assumed that the person receiving the CCB is biologically related to the child and that the child’s Indigenous status is the same as their parent’s.
Maximum preschool program hours available	Data were not available.
Preschool program repeater indicator	Data were not available in 2011.
Preschool program hours attended	The reporting of this data element by service providers was not compulsory and therefore in some instances was completed using enrolment hours. It is only compulsory to record complete day absences and therefore the hours attended may be overstated.
Management type	Data were not available.
Service delivery setting	Data were not available.
Worker data elements	Worker level data were not available.

Counts of Children:
In the collection reference period, it is possible for a child to be concurrently enrolled in and attending two or more preschool programs. In order to address collection requirements, it is important to be able to collate all matching child records.

Children in a Preschool Program in 2011:
For data sourced from the Child Care Management System (CCMS), counts of children enrolled in and attending preschool programs in 2011 were able to be derived as data were collected using a URL data collection methodology.

Children in a Preschool Program in the Year before Full-time Schooling:
Two years of comparable data collected using a URL methodology and a child/client database were not available for data collected from the CCMS.

Interpretability
Extensive explanatory information was provided in a handbook and a telephone enquiry help desk was available to assist users with queries about how to report information under the CCMS. The CCMS handbook is available for download from the DEEWR website, along with other instruction sheets and explanatory materials, at http://www.deewr.gov.au/Earlychildhood/Programs/ChildCareforServices/Operation/Pages/CCMSPublications.aspx.

Accessibility
Data sourced from the preschool program component of the CCMS for the 2011 National ECEC Collection are published at the state and territory level in Experimental Estimates of Preschool Education, Australia, 2011 on the ABS website.

Data from the CCMS are also available on the DEEWR website: http://www.deewr.gov.au/EARLYCHILDHOOD/Pages/default.aspx.

Information Source
The information in this report has been sourced from DEEWR in consultation with the ABS. Further information is available from the DEEWR website:
http://www.deewr.gov.au/EARLYCHILDHOOD/Pages/default.aspx.

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