26 November
Flying Start partner e-bulletin
Use the drop-down menu below to read the 26 November 2025 e-bulletin from the Office for Early Childhood Development.
You can access previous e-bulletins in the e-bulletin archive below. You can download any attachments in the drop-down boxes below for your records.
E-bulletin 26 November
Thank you to everyone for submitting your projected Term 1 enrolment data. As we approach January, we encourage you to continue to actively support and engage with families in completing the relevant forms to ensure their child’s enrolment in 3-year-old preschool.
Please continue to:
- Collect Registration of Interest (ROI) and Declaration and Consent forms
- Ensure all families of children who are within the eligible age range have received the forms
- Follow up with families who have received forms but haven’t returned them
- Share information and reminders through your usual communication channels
We know that you are working hard to maximise children having access to the preschool program and by keeping enrolment data up to date now will support a smooth start to the year ahead.
We appreciate that the follow up can take time, and some conversations need persistence, so thank you for continuing to champion this important work.
If you need support, communication materials, or ideas to increase family engagement, your Local Team is here to help.
Thank you to everyone who attended our Flying Start Webinar on Friday 21 November. Please refer to the below links for a recap of the information shared during the session.
As always, your OECD Local Team is available to support you with any questions or feedback that you may have regarding the webinar.
This webinar focussed on data and funding, providing Flying Start 2026 Partnering Services with information on the following topics:
- timeline review and enrolment data
- when first payments are made
- ongoing readiness reporting
We received several questions during the webinar related to age eligibility for 3-year-old preschool. Our 10 October Flying Start Webinar provided multiple scenarios which you can review in our webinar archive, which may answer some of these questions.
10 October Webinar
10 October Webinar Q&A
You can also use the Eligibility Calculator on our website to support families in enrolling their child at the right time, for their needs.
We have funded an additional 12 Flying Start Professional Networks, bringing the total number of networks to 26 across South Australia, including the state-wide Aboriginal Professionals Network.
These networks are being established to support local community services across early childhood education and care, allied health and community services to collaborate and identify areas where they can unite to deliver high quality preschool services and reduce child developmental vulnerability in their community.
All 2026 partner services allocated to one of these networks have been notified by email.
To support partner services, we have also developed a comprehensive FAQ document addressing common questions about the Professional Networks.
Work is underway to commission the final three networks to ensure state-wide coverage.
For further details, please visit the professional networks key reform initiative page.
Expressions of interest (EOI) for the delivery of Flying Start 3- and 4-year-old preschool in 2027, will open for submission on Monday 8 December 2025 and close at 5pm ACDT on Thursday 12 February 2026.
2027 partnerships will be prioritised based on:
- quality, including a service’s Assessment and Rating against the National Quality Standards;
- Early Childhood Teacher readiness; and
- location, including broad geographic coverage and areas of disadvantage as defined by the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas.
See Guidance for expressing interest to deliver Flying Start preschool in 2027.
Services that did not express interest or were not selected in the prior EOI round are welcome to express interest for 2027 partnership.
EOIs must be submitted via the iApply platform and EOIs that are not submitted by 5pm ACDT on Thursday 12 February 2026 will not be considered. The iApply link and a step-by-step user guide will be available from the OECD website ahead of EOIs opening.
For further information on the EOI process, service eligibility, timeframes or if you have any other queries, please contact the OECD Local Teams via OECD.LocalTeams@sa.gov.au
Through discussions with our partner services and Local Teams, we’ve heard that some families are asking questions about whether their 3-year-old is ‘ready’ for a preschool program. This presents an important opportunity for us to have conversations with families to support their understanding of what a 3-year-old preschool program is.
By highlighting the value of play-based, teacher-led learning, you can help families feel confident to enrol their child in your 3-year-old preschool program. This can include providing examples of play-based learning in action at your service and talking about the value of early learning for developing a child’s confidence in the world, language and social skills. This recent Mamamia article, featuring Associate Professor Yasmin Harman Smith, provides some useful tips and tricks that might support you to have these conversations or share directly with families.
Head to the 3-year-old-preschool readiness key reform initiative page to find links to our play-based learning explainer videos, the start sooner, go further campaign, and a fact sheet for parents, which may also be helpful resources in supporting conversations with families.
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