Interesting article about reporting requirements

[Steffelz]

I found this article on the reporting requirements of the NQF and Kindy programs, really interesting, Id love to hear everyones opinions on it

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/ki ... 6675094795

[law92]

I believe that this is absolutely true that early childhood educators are being snowed under with reporting requirements, when instead we need to be providing quality care to the children. I think if they want us to do all this documentation then they need to start paying us what we are worth. I'm not in this job for the money, but what we make is barely enough to live on. Enough is enough. Also, due to the new legislation where half of all staff need to have a diploma, it's making finding full time work tough for a lot of people. I know there are ladies out there who have been working in the industry for 10 years or more, but because they don't have formal qualifications they are not being offered the work they need, which is causing a lot of us to take time off from work to quickly retrain so we can get jobs. I know that I am finding it tough finding work because I only have a cert 3 and not a diploma. With the assistant duties becoming similar to that of a group leader, soon there won't be much work for assistants, as apparently we are all educators, and I think soon the minimum qual for working in a room will be just all diploma trained or higher people.

[dulciean]

Thanks for sharing the article - some very valid points in there!

[fchaudari76]

Interesting read. I am finding that more educators and feeling stressed with the amount of paperwork they are meant to do, however in saying that I think a lot of the paperwork has been over complicated within certain centres. Instead of trying to make it easier for staff I have seen things so complicated that people are getting close to nervous breakdowns, self esteem being depleted as they feel they are failing because they are "not quoting and referencing theorists" in their learning stories, they are not writing a thesis each time they do an ob or learning story.
Unfortunately a lot of people running centres themselves seem to not be overly clear on what amount of paperwork is ok or how much should be involved in the paperwork.

[Lorina]

I can't believe it's taken this long for an educator to come out and publicly say that ever since the new Regs, EYLF etc has been released the documentation has gotten way out of hand. I think this has to do with how the EYLF has been developed. When I first discovered the EYLF I had to re-read a few times just to get my head around what the framework was all about. It is rather complicated for some educators who have been in this industry for a long amount of time to suddenly be bombarded by the EYLF.

Remember the good old days, the only documentation I used to have to do was a quick ob for each child once a month or a developmental checklist and work on each child's portfolio (which took almost most of my time). Now we need to include daily reflections, evaluations, learning stories, observations, curriculum plan and to make sure they are all linking to the EYLF. I mean it's a positive step to have introduced the framework but like FeFe said some centres over complicate the documentation making it even harder to complete, which in turn causes less time interacting with the children and more time finishing off paperwork.

I also just want to point out that the EYLF is open to interpretation... I think that's why so many educators are finding it difficult. There is no pre-approved formats or plans so one centres way of documenting could be totally different from another. This is where I believe the over complicated documentation plays a part. When you read the EYLF and trying to come up with programs to support it, you begin to wonder if you are including everything to make sure you are actually implementing EYLF within the centre. It's a nightmare for someone who doesn't know what they are doing...

I'm just happy that the Online Tools are supporting educators to understand an easier and simplified way to implement the EYLF at their centre without having to over complicate things!

,
L.A

[fchaudari76]

I also just want to point out that the EYLF is open to interpretation... I think that's why so many educators are finding it difficult. There is no pre-approved formats or plans so one centres way of documenting could be totally different from another. This is where I believe the over complicated documentation plays a part. When you read the EYLF and trying to come up with programs to support it, you begin to wonder if you are including everything to make sure you are actually implementing EYLF within the centre. It's a nightmare for someone who doesn't know what they are doing...

Yep and sadly I see a LOT of people who do not know what they are doing or spinning it to suit them and making staff follow their interpretation of it rather than figuring out what personally works best for them. I keep saying "what works for me may not for you, you need to find a way that works for you".

I guide, I give ideas however I let staff choose how they document as it is no good me making them do it MY way if they do not understand MY way! grrr this whole thing really annoys me as I have heard staff say such silly things because that is just what they have been told and they just follow.

Sometimes I wish the EYLF was less vague and not so easy for the lazy people to get away with hardly doing anything or the OCD ones to get so caught up in it that they have nervous breakdowns with the amount of paperwork they are attempting to do

[LindyT]

No MORE paperwork my butt Kate Ellis!
Come work in my FDC for a week and see how much there is no more paperwork!