Congratulations!! to our very own Sarah who was this week awarded the 2017 Agnes Farrance Award from Early Childhood Australia (ECA). This annual award is given to an early childhood educator who demonstrates a strong commitment to working within the early childhood teaching and caring profession. The Award provides financial support to enable the recipient to participate in a professional conference and to have the opportunity to share their experience with colleagues and peers. Sarah will use her prize to travel to Brisbane next week where she will attend (and give a presentation at) the Australian Council for Educational leaders (ACEL) 2017 Conference. Sarah’s presentation is about Distributed and Catalytic Leadership in Early Childhood.
I felt so very proud of my fabulous team at Clarendon Children’s Centre when we got the news this week that ACECQA has awarded us the rating of “Excellent”. I had been quietly optimistic, because I felt that we had been able to make a very strong application but we had also been informed that only 35% of applications for the “Excellent” rating are successful – so we knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.
News has traveled fast, and we have been very touched by the messages of congratulations from members of our community both past and present – there is a great sense of shared ownership which speaks to many years of sustained commitment, passion, enthusiasm, collaboration and hard work! We have had messages from past educators and also colleagues from other service; from current families and from families whose children attended 15 years ago.
For educators, the “Excellent” rating is a great validation of their professionalism and for parents it confirms what they already knew in their hearts – that their children are benefiting from really high quality education and care at CCC.