Michelle Milnes

Good afternoon and welcome to the NSW Department of Education's information session on the 2026/27 Preschool Outcomes Measure Pilot. We'll just give everybody a couple of minutes to join before we kick off, but thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.

It's just kicked past 5:00. I appreciate everybody is busily finishing off their day. But again, just want to thank everyone for joining for this afternoon's information webinar about the 2026/27 Preschool Outcomes Measure Pilot. My name is Michelle Milnes. I'm the Director of Pedagogy and Practice in the Early Childhood Outcomes Division at the Department of Education.

My team will be leading the implementation of the Pilot across 2026 and 2027. We're also joined this evening by Bethany Davies and Dan Cloney from ACER, that's the Australian Council for Educational Research, who have been developing the National Tool and they are here to answer any questions you might have.

Before we begin this evening's session, we'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we're gathering today. I'm joining from beautiful unceded Dharawal country in Sydney's South and pay my respects to Elders past and present. I'd like to acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with us on the call, and of course, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to contribute to our work to improve learning, education, and research, as they have done for thousands of years.

I'll start just quickly by outlining what you can expect from this afternoon's session. We'll provide an overview of the Preschool Outcomes Measure National Tool, including the key elements that make up that formative assessment tool. I'll also outline the changes that have been made to the National Tool in response to feedback from the 2025 National Applied Trial. We'll then move on to the Preschool Outcomes Measure Pilot for 2026/27, including the purpose of the Pilot, the benefits of participating, and our goals for the Pilot. We'll also explore what your pivotal role will be in the Pilot and highlight any of the key activities and commitments expected throughout participation. We'll take you through the key milestones and important dates for participation across 2026 and 2027, and I'll outline the next steps and provide details of the key contacts who can support you throughout your participation in the Pilot.

Now, we do have a Q&A function, so if you've got a question that we haven't answered throughout this presentation this evening, please feel free to pop them in the chat. We'll also allocate approximately 10 minutes at the end if you have any specific questions that we can answer. We'll publish key details as well, if you go away thinking you've got some burning questions, please feel free to get in touch.

Okay, so the Preschool Outcomes Measure is a key reform of the Preschool Reform Agreement. The National Tool itself is a formative assessment tool that assists teachers and educators to enhance their teaching practice by gathering meaningful information about a child's learning and development in the year before school. The intention then of the National Tool is for teachers and educators to use that important information to make really evidence-based decisions about the next steps in a child's learning journey.

So across 2026 and 2027, the National Tool is looking to assess 2 age-appropriate domains. So we're looking at executive function and oral language & literacy. And the use of the National Tool will lead to an enhanced level of understanding of a child's strengths and capabilities, supporting their learning and developmental outcomes in their early learning setting. This iteration of the National Tool is really grounded in the principles of the Early Years Learning Framework, which supports well-informed teaching practice that is educator-led and play-based.

So what's new since the 2025 National Applied Trial? In 2025, the Federal Department of Education undertook a national trial of the Preschool Outcomes Measure, and this was the first time that teachers and educators were able to trial a prototype of the National Tool. From this trial, states and territories gathered feedback from participating services, their teachers and educators, and this was passed on to the Commonwealth. Based on the feedback provided from that trial, certain changes have been made to the National Tool to increase its usability and accessibility for teachers and educators, including enhancements to improve the overall user experience when using the Tool, software accessibility updates, inclusion of cultural perspectives and expanded and refined professional learning materials.

This year, what is different, states all over the country are leading their own pilot programs, and so the NSW Department of Education staff will be leading the professional learning and training for the Pilot in 2027. We'll be working alongside ACER in 2026 to ensure all participants are set up for success. The Department will take over kind of a train the trainer model into 2027.

So following the success of the National Applied Trial in 2025, we're launching a new iteration of the Pilot for 2026 and 2027.

This particular Pilot is a real opportunity for teachers and educators to help shape the future of the National Tool and play a role in informing early learning teaching practice in NSW. We're also encouraging teachers and educators to engage with the professional learning experiences and materials throughout the Pilot period, which are designed to support the use of the National Tool in practice. We really want teachers and educators to have the opportunity to pilot the use of the modified and evidence-based formative assessment tool in your own early learning services and provide us with feedback on the new reporting features.

So in terms of goals for participation, for services, teachers and educators who are part of the 2025 National Applied Trial, we really hope those participants will help us understand the impact that the updates have made in their context and understand how the National Tool works for more experienced educators.

For services, teachers and educators who are brand new to using the Preschool Outcomes Measure Tool, we hope these participants are going to provide us with a fresh perspective on the National Tool. We're also hoping that all participating services can work with us to provide feedback on the National Tool's implementation effectiveness over an extended period of time, which you'd know, we're running the Pilot across 18 months so we've got a real opportunity to see how this works in practice. We're also hoping in this Pilot period to have representation across a diverse range of priority cohorts, including children from various backgrounds with varying developmental needs and abilities, different cohorts, different service types and locations. We really want to increase the validity of feedback that we're gathering from this Pilot to make sure this tool is fit for purpose for every child and every service across NSW.

So the way that we've designed the Pilot for 2026 and 27, it has three streams.

We are looking for the stream one Pilot - this is for services that participated in the National Applied Trial in 2025. This is an 18-month Pilot looking at participation from July 2026 all the way through to December 2027. We're offering a $12,000 participation grant to services who have previously participated.

Stream 2 is for new participating services, so early learning services that did not participate in the 2025 National Applied Trial. Again, we're looking for services who are interested in participating with us for 18 months, from July 2026 all the way through to December 2027. We're offering new services a $14,000 grant payment.

Stream 3 is for new services, again, that have not participated in any of our Applied Trials, but are only able to commit to a 12-month period. So the Stream 3 services will be coming on board from February 2027, participating through to December 2027, and there's a $10,000 grant payment associated with Stream 3.

More information about our funding streams and details around these can be found in our program guidelines, which will be published on our website when expressions of interest open to participate in the program for eligible services on June 29.

So in terms of spending rules for the grant funding, participating early learning services have to use their grant funding only for cost of participating in the Pilot and related feedback activities. So these costs could include but certainly are not limited to, tools or technology to support attending things like webinars, completing professional learning and training, including internet access, tablets or other electronic devices. Funding can also be used for educational resources to support educators and teachers to administer the National Tool, backfill to relieve teachers and educators who might be participating in professional development administrative - administration of the assessment, and salary and wages for teachers participating in the Pilot. We can also use funding for tools and technology to support engaging in feedback surveys, interviews and other related activities. So there's a range of different ways in which we can use that grant funding. The specific rules around those will be published in our guidelines.

So in terms of roles and commitments for services, teachers and educators participating in the Pilot, along with Pilot participation and participation in the evaluation of the Pilot and the Tool, there are certain activities in the onboarding process that require our site leaders to engage with, to allow teachers and educators to engage in the Pilot.

Site leaders are required to support with setting up accounts and supporting professional learning attendance. We've put some indicative timing there for interested participants, hopefully there on the on the slides, but we're looking at approximately one hour for setup that might include registering your early learning service and teacher and educator accounts on OARS portal, as well as professional learning attendance, which is a really integral consideration in the development of a fit for purpose formative assessment tool. We're also looking for services to send information to parents and carers, to ensure that children whose parents are either opting in or opting out have given full consent, and we've also allocated time there for any checks and troubleshooting.

So in terms of teachers and educators, we are looking at those participating teachers and educators participating in professional learning workshops. For the services who have participated in the National Applied Trial, this will be a one-day refresher workshop to ensure that teachers and educators are nice and fresh in their use of the National Tool, and so they can fully understand and hear the changes that might have been made in response to their feedback. Streams 2 and 3 for new participating services, they will undergo a two-day professional learning workshop, who are new to the Pilot so you get a really good, solid understanding of the Tool, how it's applied, and how it will impact your teaching.

Use of the formative assessment tool, from the National Applied Trial, we have taken on board feedback for the duration of the implementation of assessments, and we're looking this year for assessments to take approximately 30 minutes per child. So for services participating in the Pilot across 2026, the minimum number of assessments to be completed per teacher is five children. And we're looking at least two teachers or educators assessing students in the year before school. So where possible, minimum of five children, so that's five assessments, per teacher with a minimum of two teachers in the year before school. In 2027, we're looking to increase that number as we become more familiar with the use of the Tool to 10 children. That's 10 assessments per teacher of children in the year before school. And obviously, this is going to be subject to the number of students that you might have enrolled in the year before school. So very happy to I guess better understand context and take those things into consideration.

Administration of assessments, as I've mentioned, takes approximately 30 minutes with the opportunity for overlap when children might be assessed in groups. The Tool itself is very flexible, allowing teachers and educators to collect evidence about children's learning across a two-week assessment window. So once we've started an assessment with an individual child, we're looking at completing that assessment within two weeks because we know children learn, grow and develop at such a rapid rate, we really want that assessment to be valid. We also need teachers and educators to be engaging with learning progressions, practice prompts and online learning materials, which will include information and resources relevant to the workshop content for review or deeper engagement with the Tool and a series of short, optional, self-paced learning modules. We're really looking at this formative assessment tool as being something to inform teaching practice, not as a duplicative effort, but really to support teachers and educators to better understand where the children in their services are up to in terms of their learning and development, and where they can take them to next.

We are also looking for teachers and educators to provide feedback on the Tool and the Pilot itself, and we think that will take approximately 30 to 60 minutes.

Thank you, so the key dates for 2026. Right now, expressions of interest via Smarty Grants for interested and eligible services will open on the 29th of June 2026, and our program guidelines will be available on the website. So expressions of interest will open on the 29th of June, they close on the 17th of July at 11.59 pm. And once those have been submitted, we will be putting applicants through an assessment panel to determine the number of services that we can include in the Pilot, because we want to make sure that we can provide an appropriate level of support to all services.

But once services have been notified that they are successful as participants in the Pilot, we will be commencing our professional learning workshops for Streams 1 and 2 in August 2026, and teachers and educators will begin using the Preschool Outcomes Measure National Tool from the end of Term 3 and into the beginning of Term 4.

As for participation in 2027, in February 2027, if services have indicated they would like to participate in Stream 3, we'll be onboarding those successful participants in February 2027. For all participants, so Streams 1, 2 and 3, we'll begin our assessments using the National Formative Assessment Tool from the end of Term 1 and into Term 2, so from March to May 2027, and we'll have a second administration of the Tool with the same child from August to September, because we really want to better understand their growth, and also what growth is occurring between March and May, and August and September.

We'd like all of those assessments completed by the end of Term 3, so teachers and educators can focus on evaluation of the Pilot across October to December.

So in terms of next steps, as I mentioned previously, expressions of interest open on the 29th of June 2026. All eligible services will receive an email with information regarding contacts and key dates, and a link to the webinar will also be included in this email. If you'd like any more information about the Pilot, you can visit our website, which is on the screen there, and will be sent out via electronic mail. And if you need any help or have any specific questions that we don't answer today, we've got an email there for you on the board.

A lot of information, but with that, very happy to take any questions that might be sitting back in the chat.

I can't see any questions floating around in the back end and no one's popping their hand up to tell me that they have got any burning questions. We've had a couple of pre-populated questions that were sent through prior to the webinar.

So I think, in terms of the 2026-27 Pilot and how it differs from the National Applied Trial, really the largest difference, it is a larger pilot, it has a longer implementation phase and we're including more services across NSW to make sure that we are getting this tool right for children, families and services across NSW, and it really builds on the learnings from previous trials. We want to continue to test and refine the Preschool Outcomes Measure National Tool to make sure it is fit for purpose before we bring it online for broader use.

In terms of professional learning, there'll be a range of professional learning available to services before using the Preschool Outcomes Measure National Tool, and that will involve a combination of in-person and online opportunities. We're really looking to support services in regional areas to have a nice tailored approach to the use of the National Tool. So where possible, we will have flexible delivery options.

In terms of activities and data collection, participating services will complete those national Preschool Outcomes Measure assessments, and they'll be providing feedback of their experience of the use of the National Tool. This year, the Tool has really been designed to minimise administrative burden while gathering really valuable information to support the refinement of the Tool and our implementation approach. However, the data that's collected in the Preschool Outcomes Measure, it won't follow through with children to school. The information collected through the Pilot is used to support the evaluation of the Preschool Outcomes Measure National Tool. It's not really intended to follow individual children into school or be used for transition to school purposes, but it can be used to inform how we communicate with families where children are up to developmentally, and it might be something that we consider including in Transition to School Statements at a later stage.

I've got one other question here around submitting an expression of interest and withdrawing later. I'd really encourage services to carefully consider their participation before submitting an expression of interest. If a service does submit that an expression of interest is accepted to participate and can no longer participate, I'd really encourage the service to contact the Preschool Outcomes Measure Team as early as possible to discuss their situation. But obviously, we want to make sure that services that are participating are willing and able to participate from the time that they've committed right through to the evaluation because for us, it's really important that we're able to collect data over a long period of time.

How many hours do we have to devote for each month, approximately? We've done our best, I think, to outline the time commitments in the slide deck, including the upfront time frame. So depending on the streams that services choose to participate in, whether it's a returning service, it's a full day of professional learning for participating early learning teachers and educators. For new services, it would be two full days of professional learning. We're looking at five children per teacher and educator, so approximately 30 minutes per child at minimum. So, you know, 2 1/2 hours of assessment and then any additional engagement with professional learning. It might be an hour and two hours, depending on where people's interests might lie for 2026. And in 2027, we can double that because we're looking at 10 assessments across the first assessment period and 10 assessments across the second assessment period at approximately 30 minutes per service, and then 1-2 hours involvement and engagement at the end of the Pilot for evaluation purposes.

Will it overlap with transition to school statements? It doesn't overlap because it's a formative rather than summative assessment. We would look to eventually take the learnings from the formative assessment tool to inform any changes to the transition to school digital statement moving forward. But we are hoping that the transition statement and the information that you'd gain from use of the formative assessment might actually help teachers and educators to complete transition to school digital statements because I have a really strong solid understanding of where children are up to in terms of their executive function and their oral language and literacy.

And I think there's a question here as well. What's changed since last year's trial? What's changed is that we have incorporated feedback from participating services around the usability of the Tool. They've made some changes to some of the tiles, and teachers and educators have more control, I think, over the tiles that they are choosing for assessment with children in the year before school. The trial is longer and we've really tried this year to provide quite tailored professional learning and support to teachers and educators across both online platforms and in person.

I also have our colleagues, Bethany and Dan. I can see there's quite a specific question here, Bethany and Dan, around the actual Tool. So activities and iPad tasks, I think one of the participants online is keen to join again and would like to see some of the changes of the same children in two parts of the year. But if the Tool's the same, it might not be as useful in the same format. I'm wondering, Bethany or Dan, if you might be able to support with answering that question. And if not, we will be able to provide some feedback later.

Dan Cloney

Michelle, just read the question out to me one more time so I can make sure I've got it.

Michelle Milnes

I will, Dan. Has the actual Tool changed at all based on advice from last year? So activities, especially the iPad tasks.

Dan Cloney

Yeah. So, absolutely. I think the main focus based on the feedback we received during the National Applied Trial was that folks would like simpler content, so we've gone through and simplified the instructions, we've bolstered the inclusive nature of the Tool, so now there are - the ability to use it with readers and other tools.

Overall, the assessment tasks are shorter, so we're asking folks to do less total time of assessment. There's also some new content in there. But I think, picking up maybe the subtext in that question, I think the thing that may be most attractive to folks coming back for the second time is that we heard loud and clear that folks wanted to be able to preview what the requirements of the assessment tasks were. So you'll be able to view ahead of time what the task is asking you to do, what the tile is asking you to do, what the requirements are around setup and any materials you might like to have on hand, and the kind of skills that are being assessed. That's coupled with the ability to skip tiles, so you'll be able to skip more tiles. I think in the National Applied Trial, we limited it to one - now we've lifted that.

And perhaps the biggest change is teachers and educators will be able to give us their preference for the kind of assessment tasks they want to use, so if you've got a real preference for observation, whether that be structured or in free play, you can say that up front and we will heavily favour those kind of assessment tasks in the assessments that are selected for the child.

We have taken on a lot of feedback and spent the last six months trying to implement as much of it as possible. We'll rely on your feedback again this year to provide some changes leading into 2027. And again, through 2027, we'll be out talking to folks using the Tool, looking for as much feedback as possible. We're going through this iterative process so that by the end of 2027, we've got something that really is meeting the needs of both giving you valid reliable and fair information about what children can do, and something that's really well suited to implementing in everyday preschool programs.

Michelle Milnes

Thanks, Dan. I'm wondering if I can, while I've got you, ask you a question. I've got a question here around the Tool, including children's voice and agency. Is there an opportunity this year for the Tool to include children's voice and agency?

Dan Cloney

Yeah, so.

Of course, one of our key design principles is centred on child voice. The main period of time we were getting input specifically from children was in 2025 when we were able to send many of our researchers out into the field to do work one-on-one with children, including asking them about the kind of content that they wanted to see in the activities that are built into the Tool.

We picked that up - what we will rely on now is that teachers and educators who use the Tool will provide that kind of feedback to us. So, obviously children have agency in the sense that they are free to participate in the assessment or not, so they can opt out or say they don't want to participate.

The PD you'll see is centred on an interaction based assessment. So, we want children to enjoy and get value out of the interaction. So again, within the assessment, they might choose to opt out of a tile, that's fine. But the finer detailed information that you pick up about the things that children responded well to, where they saw their learning, for example, where they were agents in sort of that partnership in their assessment. We will rely on that coming back to us through the questionnaires we use, which we'll ask teachers and educators and site leaders to do, and those focus groups, which for folks who participated in the National Applied Trial in 2025, you'll remember that folks were invited to join smaller groups to provide feedback to us directly, either us coming to visit in situ or to join small groups.

Michelle Milnes

Thanks, Dan. I think there's a question I've seen here too. So if a child is 4 in 2026, is eligible for kindergarten but actually chooses to stay in the service into 2027, could they administer the assessment on the child potentially three times?

Dan Cloney

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the core design principles when all the states and territories agreed to collaborate on developing the Preschool Outcomes Measure, it was focused on being able to describe children's progress through preschool.

We know some children do do a second year of that 4-year-old program, and so you're welcome to assess the same child multiple times if that's the case. In 2027, we will really shift our focus to collecting evidence to describe children's progress over the preschool year. So you'll get the opportunity to get some output from the Tool that will describe the progress that each child has made when you've assessed them multiple times, and I think for teachers and educators who are fortunate to have that child in 2026 and in 2027, and there's that continuity of the relationship. I think you'll have some terrific feedback for us as well about the validity of the evidence that we're collecting and presenting to you, do you see that in the progress the child has made?

And of course, the Tool is designed to respond to the child. So in my field, we call that an adaptive assessment, but essentially as the child moves through the assessment with the adult, with the educator or the teacher, the challenge in the things that we ask children to do or to demonstrate or for you to observe goes up and down with where we think the child is most likely in terms of their learning progress.

So over 2026-27, if that child is assessed three times, we would expect that the assessment content will change for them and for you as they make progress.

Michelle Milnes

That's really, really helpful, Dan. Thank you.

There's a couple of questions just around service size and location. For very small services, particularly those located in regional and remote areas, we want to make sure that these services have a voice. If you have less than six children enrolled in their year before school, we'd still like you to apply. I don't think that deems you ineligible. We really want to make sure that a range of different service types are represented across the trial.

There's a question around eligibility - we are really focusing this trial period on collecting data from a range of different service types. We're looking at long day care and preschools that are located in a range of different regional remote, very remote areas. We're looking for high representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, children who come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, or who might have additional needs or be twice exceptional. So, services that are eligible to participate will receive an EDM from the Department of Education inviting them to participate in the trial. And for those services that are regionally and remotely based, we will have more information once we better understand our participant cohort, but we are endeavouring to provide in-person sessions in regional areas as well as metro and providing an opportunity for services in remote areas to join through an online medium.

I can't see any other questions, but this webinar will be recorded. It will be made available on our website. We will be publishing the questions that have been asked, along with a link to the guidelines and the application link as well for eligible services to participate in the 2026-27 Preschool Outcomes Measure Pilot.

Thank you so very much for your time this evening. I appreciate it is Thursday. It is quite wet in Sydney, and so I hope that everybody has a lovely evening.

The Preschool Outcomes Measure (the National Tool) assesses the key domains of oral language and literacy, and executive function – supporting educators to observe, understand and respond to children’s learning and development over time. 

It is intended to support ongoing formative assessment, planning conversations and teaching practice, not to produce comparative or ranked outcomes.

The 2026/27 Preschool Outcomes Measure Pilot forms part of the ongoing development of the National Tool. 

Selected early learning services across NSW will participate in the Pilot. 

At the end of this process, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) will deliver a validated formative assessment tool, a set of learning progressions, and a series of professional development resources to support teaching practice and planning. 

Findings from the Pilot will inform the continued development and refinement of the National Tool, the department’s approach to formative assessment and its integration into everyday teaching, learning and planning cycles. Services are encouraged to provide feedback on their experience using the National Tool, including consideration of how it aligns with existing processes such as the Transition to School Digital Statement. 

The National Tool includes embedded elements to support accessibility and inclusion for children with diverse capabilities and learning requirements, reflecting feedback from earlier trial phases. 

ACER has also partnered with Ninti One to support culturally responsive design, including approaches that recognise and build on the strengths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. 

Ongoing participation from children across diverse cohorts continues to inform refinement to ensure the National Tool remains inclusive for all children and appropriate across a range of contexts. 

The Preschool Outcomes Measure is a joint initiative of the Australian and state and territory governments. This formative assessment tool is being developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) in partnership with Goodstart Early Learning and Ninti One. 

Each early learning service must ensure that, where practicable, two representatives (educators and/or teachers) assess a minimum of 5 children each at the Term 3 - Term 4 2026 assessment point. This is the expected minimum number of children to be assessed per assessor, subject to reasonable operational constraints, service size and number of children enrolled in their year before school.

In 2027 each early learning service must ensure that, where practicable, two representatives (educators and/or teachers) assess 10 children each at each assessment point. This is the expected minimum, number of children to be assessed per assessor, subject to reasonable operational constraints, service size and number of children enrolled in their year before school.

Where capacity and resources allow, early learning services may assess additional children beyond this minimum requirement.

Participating services will receive professional learning to support understanding of the formative assessment approach, and how it can be used to strengthen existing Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) aligned teaching, planning and reflection practices.  

Services will use the National Tool during a defined Pilot period, integrating it flexibly within their existing practice. 

Participants will be asked to provide feedback on usability, flexibility and how well the National Tool supports everyday teaching and learning cycles.

Participating services will be supported through a combination of professional learning, resources, funding and ongoing assistance designed to strengthen teacher/educator-led use of the National Tool within everyday practice.

Support includes:  

• Professional learning workshops completed prior to Pilot participation to support familiarisation with the National Tool and its use in practice

• Funding, provided by the department to support participation and implementation

• Access to online self-paced resources throughout the Pilot via the Preschool Learning Management System (LMS) 

• Access to Helpdesk support via phone and email during business hours (Preschool Support Team) 

• A searchable online Helpdesk with guide materials, user resources and video demonstrations
  

This support is designed to assist services to integrate the National Tool within existing Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) informed planning, reflection and assessment practices.

Yes. A combination of in-person and online professional learning opportunities will be available to support flexible participation across services.

The department is working with the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) to coordinate delivery of workshops and will provide further information to support service planning and attendance.

Webinars will be recorded and made available to all registered participants. Supporting materials will also be provided after the session.

For assistance with registration via ACER’s Online Assessment and Reporting System (OARS) platform, please submit a request to the Preschool Support Team. 

For support relating to the program guidelines please call 1800 619 113 or email: ececd@det.nsw.edu.au

For assistance submitting the department’s application form via Smarty Grants, please contact the SmartyGrants helpline on (03) 9320 6888 or email service@smartygrants.com.au.

No. The Pilot is a targeted opportunity, and only selected services will be invited to participate. Service selection is based on a combination of community need, service characteristics and geographic coverage.