24135 – Early Foundation (Childcare)

One of five Meridian components. Measures early-childhood/childcare foundation from three signals: ACECQA average National Quality Framework (NQF) rating, preschool attendance % (population 0–4), and female labour-force-participation rate (a childcare-access proxy).

Source: ACECQA National Registers (18,166 active services) joined to suburbs by normalised name match; 2021 Census GCP SAL (G01/G15/G46B).

Alignment with the pillar. Across the 5,416 localities with more than 200 residents scored on both, this component and APN Meridian™ (Education Value Index) (24130) have a correlation of 0.72, on a scale where 1 means the two scores move together exactly and 0 means they are unrelated. The two are moderately aligned: a locality that scores high on this component tends to score above average on Meridian, with many exceptions. This component is one of the pillar’s five inputs, so part of that alignment is built into the pillar itself.

Each bar is the average score of the jurisdiction’s localities with more than 200 residents, with every locality counted equally regardless of population; the dashed line marks the national mean of 47.70. The Australian Capital Territory averages highest at 64.3 (98 localities) and Tasmania lowest at 37.1 (212). Victoria averages 56.9, New South Wales 51.9, South Australia 44.1, Queensland 42.2, Western Australia 38.7 and the Northern Territory 37.2. Other Territories (3 localities) are not shown.

The other four components of APN Meridian™ (Education Value Index) (24130).