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Advancing Pedagogy & Practice
Individual Leadership
- Emma Forsyth, ECMS
- Kristy Hyndes, Gilgandra Preschool Incorporated
- Samantha Vale, Windsor Community Children's Centre
Outstanding Service
Read the media release
Advancing Pedagogy & Practice
Kinglake Ranges Children's Centre
Kinglake, VIC
Kinglake Ranges Children's Centre is recognised for reimagining early childhood practice and challenging traditional school readiness through 'Our Voices, Our Future – Children Leading Resilient Communities', an integrated relational pedagogy that empowers children’s agency through nature-based learning and community connection.
Working with families impacted by trauma and socio-economic disadvantage, the Centre has lifted developmental outcomes above Victorian and national benchmarks whilst improving children’s wellbeing and community capacity. KRCC's Our Voices, Our Future model gives children real agency through multi-age learning and their djila burru burru bush program, which supports resilience, emotional regulation and connection to Country.
Families recognise the holistic support KRCC provides the whole family as positively contributing to their wellbeing, while local schools reflect that children from the centre are curious, resilient and independent.
Lantana Kindergarten
Parafield Gardens, SA
Lantana Kindergarten is recognised for strengthening their children's understanding of their role as active citizens. Lantana focused on extending their sense of belonging beyond the local community and, fostering an awareness of global citizenship, they created the 'Friends over the Ocean' project and partnered with a kindergarten in Qingdao, China.
Led by Director Kylie Millington and early career teacher Sean Sun, the team established an authentic partnership with UniHearts Kindergarten in Qingdao, Adelaide's sister city in China.
Grounded in principles of learning through relationships, participation and place-based pedagogy, children shared their identities and environments through video conversations, collaborative art, storytelling, music and digital technologies, while families contributed stories and artefacts to deepen cultural exchange. The project has since been shared with kindergartens across the sector.
Nathan Chu and Stella Pabon - MacGregor Outside School Hours Care
MacGregor, QLD
MacGregor Outside School Hours Care (MOSHC) is recognised for groundbreaking action research led by Nathan Chu and Stella Pabon, which placed children at the centre of the question: ‘what makes a quality educator?’
Guided by a Children's Rights framework, they engaged primary school-aged children through talking circles, role play, drawings, song writing, and photo diaries to reflect the diverse ways children communicate. The children didn't just contribute data, they endorsed and extended the researchers' findings. The result was seven child-identified educator qualities, with emotional connection and authenticity emerging as children's highest priorities.
Co-authored with Griffith University researchers and presented at the WERA Global Conference in Sweden, the findings are reshaping professional development, recruitment, and program design at MOSHC, while offering the wider OSHC sector a replicable, rights-based model for child-informed quality evaluation. The project was undertaken through the Queensland Children's Activities Network Action Research program, which has supported MacGregor OSHC in exploring quality improvement since 2015.
Individual Leadership
Emma Forsyth
Early Childhood Management Services, Northcote, VIC
Emma Forsyth is recognised for her exceptional leadership at the intersection of early childhood research, policy, and practice.
As Head of Pedagogy at ECMS, Emma provides strategic leadership across 76 services, over 1,000 staff, driving a culture of evidence-informed, equitable pedagogy. She pioneered a relational approach to professional growth, contributing to ECMS' receipt of the Emeritus Professor Collette Tayler Award for Educational Leadership. Emma collaborates with ACER on assessment and teacher judgement, contributes to Ngarrngga, led by The University of Melbourne supporting the vision for all Australian children to connect with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge systems, histories and cultures. Emma serves as one of only 50 non-Indigenous members of AERO's First Nations Expert Reference Group.
A skilled mentor and researcher, Emma consistently translates complex evidence into meaningful practice, ensuring every child experiences responsive, high-quality early childhood education.
Kristy Hyndes
Gilgandra Preschool, Gilgandra, NSW
Kristy Hyndes is recognised for her leadership in rural early childhood education, grounded in the belief that when educators are intentionally supported and upskilled, they become the catalyst for lasting change.
As Director, Nominated Supervisor and Early Childhood Teacher at Gilgandra Preschool, Kristy developed a workforce capability model encompassing values-aligned recruitment, a structured ten-week induction program, and embedded mentoring, coaching and reflective practice. Her distributed leadership model, built around mentor and guru roles, strengthens collective capability and shared ownership across the service. Initiatives including Bush Preschool and the integration of emotional support dog Rue support children's wellbeing, regulation and sense of belonging within everyday practice.
Children have achieved developmental gains ranging from three months to five years and eight months. Extending her impact beyond Gilgandra, Kristy established the "From the Stem Up" conference to improve access to professional learning for rural and regional educators.
Samantha Vale
Windsor Community Children's Centre, Windsor, VIC
Sam Vale is a recognised leader who was instrumental in a two-year community campaign to save Windsor Community Children's Centre (WCCC), a not-for-profit service she has called home since 2000.
When WCCC faced eviction and potential closure, Sam mobilised families, educators, peak bodies, unions and politicians to fight for its future. This campaign secured $8.4 million in combined federal and council funding, achieving record-breaking government submissions, and delivering bipartisan political support and, most importantly, ensuring 54 children retain access to quality early childhood education in their area. A record 651 government land submissions were lodged, and the campaign achieved bipartisan support across all parties and independents.
Throughout the uncertainty, not one staff member or family left the service. Her steady, compassionate leadership kept over 30 educators employed with the centre and ensured the children and their families could continue their connection to the early childhood education they love in the community they call home.
Outstanding Service
Balnarring Preschool
Balnarring, VIC
Balnarring Preschool is recognised for its whole-service commitment to reconciliation and holistically embedding First Nations Peoples knowledges into its early childhood programs.
Learning environments include a single-room community preschool, and Foreshore reserve on Boonwurrung Country in Victoria. The team works alongside Elders and First Nations Peoples to reshape teaching pedagogy, practice, and policies. This includes an ongoing collaborative partnership with Boonwurrung Senior Elder N’arwee’t Professor Carolyn Briggs, through which the preschool supports the publication of her stories, illustrated by children, as educational resources that share her knowledge.
The Balnarring Preschool team strengthens relationships beyond its own community by facilitating an annual two-day conference, now drawing more than 400 practitioners, and leading the Womindjeka Balnarring Ngargee Festival, a community celebration of First Nations Peoples and cultures.
Byron Bay Preschool Coogera
Lennox Head, NSW
Byron Bay Preschool Coogera (BBPC) is recognised for building an inclusive community-driven approach that has brought early childhood education to families across the Northern Rivers of NSW who would not otherwise have access to it.
BBPC developed a range of targeted programs to respond to a complex local context shaped by natural disasters, transient populations, families living off-grid, and newcomers without support networks. Their intergenerational programs foster genuine connections between children and elderly neighbours. Nature Hearts, a licensed bush preschool, reaches families who haven’t accessed centre-based care. Their Village Vibes program, spanning flood recovery workshops, playgroups, baby groups, and neurodiversity networks, has supported over 70 previously isolated families.
Children help shape policies and routines through their own meetings and risk assessments, giving them a real say in their daily life. Staff-led research drives continuous quality improvement, earning Australia's highest early childhood education rating.
C&K Woodford Community Kindergarten
Woodford, QLD
C&K Woodford Community Kindergarten is recognised for embedding authentic Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture into every aspect of its practice.
On Jinibara Country in rural Queensland, educators built genuine community partnerships, transformed their physical environment, and created a culturally safe space where every child's identity is seen and celebrated. Identifying a gap in their practice in 2023, educators Chloe and Rachael embarked on a deliberate journey to strengthen their knowledge alongside Elders and community. Following this experience, they restructured their program to weave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture into daily life: traditional cooking, weaving, song and language as weekly rituals, a living bush tucker garden and clap sticks for every child to use and explore. Partnerships with Jinibara Elders are reciprocal and ongoing.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families who once encountered a system offering little cultural acknowledgement now actively share language, stories and food, with all of the children carrying that knowledge home.
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