OSCA stories

The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) is the national peak body for the Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector. We are a not-for-profit, member-funded organisation advocating for the future of Australia’s children. We work on behalf of early learning service providers to ensure families, and their children, have an opportunity to access affordable, high quality early learning services throughout Australia.

The Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) is critical for the early learning sector. It ensures the right talent is attracted to the appropriate role, aligning their skills and qualifications with the specific demands of the positions available. Using appropriate job titles and descriptions of work tasks helps to accurately reflect the specific training and experience of the ECEC workforce.

Accurate data on occupations in the ECEC sector better informs our advocacy and policy work. This leads to improved outcomes for families by ensuring that a larger number of qualified educators and teachers are delivering high-quality education and care. By clearly identifying occupations, individual educators have a better understanding of their current roles and the steps needed to advance to the next level, making it easier to develop personalised career pathways and professional development plans.

Additionally, detailed data generated from OSCA allows us to allocate funding more effectively, directing resources to areas where they are most needed. This means that support can be targeted towards enhancing training programs, improving facilities and addressing workforce gaps, ultimately strengthening the ECEC sector.

Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) provides information about Australia’s workforce to inform policymaking and the public. We conduct high quality research, data analysis and policy-advising to support a responsive and adaptive workforce. Our work involves identifying the evolving demands of the labour market, fostering opportunities for upskilling and reskilling, and guiding informed policy decisions that enhance economic growth and employment outcomes.

The Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) feeds into all our products and research, each of which looks at information through an occupational or skill lens. We rely heavily on the use of a solid and reliable standardised occupational taxonomy which helps us produce accurate labour market indicators to support policymakers, as well as employers and education providers through our public products.

The classification allows us to have increased precision in our data reporting. This better reflects current industry standards and the workforce landscape and allows more detail and granularity with our work. This means, we can increase our responsiveness to labour market trends and provide stronger insights to identify and communicate areas for upskilling, training and investment. Accurate statistics can also be collected on new occupations which allows us to map the workforce in relevant industries and map existing data to emerging occupations.

Through OSCA, and higher quality data, our products and research will reflect the current skills, roles and qualifications in demand. This ensures that education providers, training programs and workforce policies meet real world requirements and support a more capable and job ready workforce.

The Office for Women, located within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, works to advance the Government’s commitment to achieve gender equality and improve the lives of women in Australia. We provide evidence-based gender advice and deliver effective policies and programs for the Minister for Women and the Prime Minister.

High quality, gender disaggregated data is critical for designing policies to achieve gender equality. We use data from the Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) to assist with gender responsive budgeting through the analysis of gender segregated workforces and development of new policies. Some occupations, such as the workforce supporting survivors of gender-based violence, are traditionally feminised workforces and in this case, largely supporting women and children.

Accurate classification of the family, domestic and sexual violence workforce is necessary to provide stronger accountability and transparency and ensure Government assistance is well targeted and effective. The classification assists with understanding the extent of occupational gender segregation by enabling better analysis and development of future policies addressing gender segregated workforces. 

OSCA also enables us to understand the extent and nature of occupational gender segregation in the Australian labour market and develop targeted and evidence-based policy. This helps policy makers design interventions to close the gender pay gap, close the retirement income gap and balance paid and unpaid care. By knowing more about the workforce supporting survivors of gender-based violence, the Australian Government will be able to ensure future programs and policies are targeted to support workers undertaking such an important job.