- School Readiness Funding -

School Readiness Funding is a permanent and ongoing part of the Victorian kindergarten funding model. School Readiness Funding supports 3-year-old and 4-year-old children in all early childhood education and care services delivering state-funded kindergarten programs in Victoria, including long day care.

Little Tikes Early Learning submits a School Readiness Funding Plan annually that draws on local and service-level data to determine the needs of our service cohort. This data is drawn from the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC).

Our School Readiness Funding plan aligns with the 3 school readiness priority areas:

• communication (language development)
• wellbeing (social and emotional) and
• access and inclusion.

A mid-year review and end-of-year acquittal is also submitted annually and this confirms how our School Readiness Funding has been spent. The amount of School Readiness Funding each service receives, is based on the level of need of children enrolled at the service. This is informed by parental occupation and education data (Student Family Occupation and Education data or SFOE), as this is considered an accurate predictor of educational disadvantage. Similarly, parental occupation and education data is used in schools to allocate ‘needs-based’ funding.

It is important that Little Tikes  Early Learning accurately collect parents’ occupation and education information each year, as part of the enrolment process, to which we are required to enter this into the Kindergarten Information Management system as part of annual confirmation in August each year. This information is necessary for the Department to understand the educational needs of children and services across Victoria, and determine how funding will be allocated in future years.