Your Guide to Program Planning in OSHC

You’re an Early Childhood Professional and you decide to change your career and start working in Outside of School Hours Care. Its an exciting time and you’re thrilled to get in and start running your program.

Starting your career in OSHC can be challenging and thrilling, from the outside it looks the same as Early Childhood, but from the inside there is a lot of differences. One of the main pieces we hear back from Early Childhood Educators is the difference in Program Planning time. When you’re working as an Educational Leader, Room Leader or Nominated Supervisor in Early Childhood you have a lot of time off the floor to focus on planning for children’s well-being, develop and learning.

When you step into an OSHC role, this changes significantly. So how do you plan accordingly and meet the National Quality Framework?  There are many organisations around who have great tools that they provide to their educators, they employ people as Area Managers and Quality Managers to help educators effectively meet the framework. However, if your working for a school directly and don’t have this support it can be a challenge.

The most effective way to meet the National Quality Framework requirements is simple, Train your Team. An effective team of educators can support any Coordinator or Director of Service in implementing the child outcomes, linking activities to children’s learning and development and maintain an effective routine.

As someone who supply’s OSHC Educators to services and organisations, I am constantly working to train my educators to consistently complete Observations and Reflection Journal Entries even for a program they may visit once.   These small tasks make up a big part of Quality Area 1 and allow and support services to strive for Exceeding.

How do you effectively manage program planning in OSHC? Utilise the team around you to support your everyday tasks. Train your casual educators in all processes to support when there is sickness and placement.

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The Strength of each member is the team” – Phil Jackson

If you are interested in working in OSHC please contact Katie Heinrichs, katie.k@anzuk.education