TASMANIA

DATA QUALITY STATEMENT

In 2013, Tasmania (Tas.) was responsible for one data collection in relation to preschool programs, the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection.

Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Collection

Institutional Environment

The organisation responsible for the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection was the Tasmanian Department of Education (DoE). Data for the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection were collected under the Education Act 1994 (Tas.). Worker data were collected under the Tasmanian Personal Information Protection Act 2004 (Tas.).

Relevance

The data collected by Tas. DoE in the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection were used to report on Tasmanian achievements against performance targets, as well as progress against Australian Government ECEC targets and COAG reforms. For preschools, the information obtained was also used in determining the funding of services by the Tasmanian government.

Scope: The scope of the early childhood component of the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection consisted of all children enrolled in a preschool program in 2013. The 2013 Data Collection was managed in conjunction with the Tasmanian Catholic Education Office and the Independent Schools of Tasmania in order to cover preschool children at non-government schools accurately.

The scope for data provided on workers included all paid and unpaid contact workers that were employed in Government, Independent and Catholic schools during the reference period and were involved in service provision of a preschool program.

Data for 3 year old children are included in the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection under the following exemption provisions. All 3 year old students as at 1 January 2013 who were granted an exemption to start kindergarten before they turned 4 years old as at 1 January 2013. This exemption is granted if:

• The student is assessed as gifted, or
• The student was previously enrolled in a pre-school program interstate in 2012 or 2013, to enable contiguous school education.

Coverage: All registered Government schools, Catholic schools, and Independent schools in Tas. participated in the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection.

Data collection methods: The Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection was conducted 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 at the worker record level

In 2013, Tasmania DoE introduced a new data collection application to replace the previous data collection template methodology. This improved the:

• Data security and storage of all data
• Data accuracy and validation in real-time
• Accuracy, efficiency and production of data templates to be supplied to the ABS.

Timeliness

The Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection is an annual collection and in 2013 was undertaken on 2 August 2013, with a reference period of 29 July to 9 August 2013. This reference fortnight was adopted by Tas. DoE to reflect the preschool delivery model in Tasmania. This reference fortnight was then derived by Tas. DoE to a one week reference period to enable comparison with other jurisdictions for the Collection. Completion of the data processing and validation stage took approximately 2 months after the collection date, at which time data were delivered to the ABS.

Data sourced from the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection for the purposes of the Collection are published by the ABS in Preschool Education, Australia, 2013 (cat. no. 4240.0).

Accuracy

Child level data: The process of obtaining and processing data in Tas. commenced with government service providers uploading information from each child enrolment form into the student management system ‘EduPoint’ which stored the information in a data warehouse. The data warehouse contains in-built data quality checks that provided timely data feedback to schools. Data from the warehouse were then used to populate the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Data Collection.

Worker level data: Teacher data were collected directly from the Tasmanian ECEC Workforce database. Qualification information for teachers and principals was collected from the Tas. ‘Teacher Registration Board’, which also holds a current record of qualifications of all teachers. All non-teacher worker qualification data were collected directly from Government, Independent and Catholic schools, as the government data warehouse does not hold non-teacher data centrally.

If a worker holds more than one qualification, the following rules apply:

• the highest ECE qualification is reported for the worker if applicable
• in instances where the worker does not hold an ECE qualification, then the highest teaching related qualification is reported
• in instances where the worker does not hold a teacher qualification, the highest non-teaching related qualification is reported.

All teachers in Tas. must be registered by the Tas. Teacher Registration Board. As a result of the registration process, some long-term teachers have teaching certification or relevant 3 year degrees. The registration process requires all long-term teachers to demonstrate, through teaching experience, that they meet the criteria for an equivalent 4 year degree standard. If a long-term teacher meets this criterion, the teachers are deemed to have a 4 year teaching qualification for registration purposes.

The collection data were reviewed and cleaned by Tas. DoE staff. This process included numerous system quality checks such as confirming student ages, hours enrolled, and verifying duplicate enrolments across schools. A declaration stage is included in the data collection application, which each principal was required to review and declare that all data were true and correct. This set of students became the authoritative dataset for the census date. Preschool data were extracted from this census application to match with all other data collated for the Collection. Extensive quality assurance occurred for the attendance and teacher qualification data, to ensure that data were consistent with other Tas. DoE data sources.

Some specific validation methods applied in the data collection application and by Tas. DoE included:

• data code compliance with the ECEC NMDS
• detection of inconsistent data coding. For example, teacher with no qualifications, and students with dates of birth outside expected date ranges, indicate coding errors
• comparisons of student enrolment counts with previous year data
• review of school summary tables by student and workforce data by various categories, i.e. Indigenous status, enrolment hours
• students in repeat years of preschool
• key collection outputs are meaningful.

Coherence

For the purposes of the Collection, data collected through the Tas. 2013 ECEC Data Collection were comparable with data collected in 2012, as both collections were undertaken using a consistent URL data collection methodology.

Specific data elements collected using methods which did not align with the ECEC NMDS specifications are outlined below and should be taken into account when comparing data collected from each dataset. An analysis of the coherence of this collection with other jurisdictional collections should be undertaken on an individual basis, taking into account any data elements that are not consistent with the ECEC NMDS specifications. Deviations between the 2013 ECEC NMDS and data collected from the Tasmanian 2013 ECEC Collection, are outlined in Table 6.6.

Data Element	Details of Deviation
Maximum preschool program hours available (Child)	The data element ‘Preschool program attendance hours’ was used as a proxy for this data element.
Child attendance and enrolment data	Hours of attendance were derived from the kinder class times. Attendance was recorded per class.

Counts of Children:
It is possible for a child to be concurrently enrolled in and attending two or more preschool programs and attend preschool across years. In order to address collection requirements, it is important to be able to identify matched episode records for a child, both within a collection cycle and between years accurately.

Children in a Preschool Program in 2013:
For Tas., counts of children enrolled in and attending preschool programs in 2013 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:
As Tas. had two years of comparable data collected using a URL methodology and had a child/client database, counts of children enrolled in and attending preschool programs in the year before full-time schooling were also able to be derived.

Interpretability

To support data custodians participating in the Tas. 2013 ECEC Data Collection, a guide was sent to service providers to assist users entering data in the data collection application.

Accessibility

Data sourced from the Tas. 2013 ECEC Data Collection for the 2013 Collection are published at the state and territory level in Preschool Education, Australia, 2013 (cat. no. 4240.0) on the ABS website.

Information Source

The information contained within this report has been sourced from Tas. DoE in consultation with the ABS. Further information is available at the Tas. DoE website <www.education.tas.gov.au>.

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