Strategic Cross-Sectoral Data Committee for Early Childhood, Education and Training

Terms of reference

Mission

The SCDC for early childhood, education and training contributes to the advancement of the evidence base for policy and public accountability by fostering the development of high quality, relevant and coherent statistics across all education sectors in order to facilitate the measurement of learning over the life-course through data sharing and data integration.

Role

The SCDC for early childhood, education and training will be responsible for directing a program of work to ensure that there are robust data sets capable of allowing comprehensive reporting on the delivery of the education and training outcomes, indicators and measures contained in the National Agreements, National Partnerships and Implementation Plans under the COAG Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations. The SCDC will work closely with the COAG Reform Council and the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision in formulating this program of work.

The SCDC will support a major program of statistical development including the development of common data standards, definitions and metadata across the early childhood, education and training sectors. It will specify enduring cross-sectoral data sets and support a data sharing environment that allows for the creation of such data sets.

The SCDC makes decisions relevant to its responsibilities on matters such as data standards, data collections and data collection procedures across the education and training sector including early childhood, schooling, training and higher education.

All decisions of the SCDC must be ratified by NSOC and AEEYSOC within a work program agreed by MCTEE and MCEECDYA and require the agreement of the Australian Statistician where such decisions may impact on the work of the ABS.

Any new subcommittees established to manage elements of the SCDC work program will have well defined outputs and an appropriate limited time horizon.
 

Timeframe and reporting arrangements

Membership

The SCDC will comprise senior officials, with a suitable balance across levels of government, jurisdictions, education sectors and relevant information agencies. Membership will include:

• a representative from NSOC
• a representative from AEEYSOC
• a representative from the ABS
• a representative of DEEWR
• representatives from the major sectoral data agencies (ACARA, NCVER, AIHW)
• the chairs of related data committees (such as the Principal Committee on Data and Performance Measurement)
• Chair, Learner Identity Management subgroup.

The Productivity Commission and COAG Reform Council will be invited as observers to the SCDC.

The chair will rotate amongst the jurisdictional members (the NSOC, AEEYSOC and DEEWR representatives).

Chair

Contact details