Australia doesn’t lack vision when it comes to wanting the best outcomes for our children in their early years.
Our early learning frameworks are sophisticated, values-driven and internationally respected. The National Quality Standard (NQS-regulations) requires environments to be fit for purpose and to promote children’s learning and development. The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) requires practice to be informed by contemporary research and theory.
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In an outdoor space, early learning environments should reflect contemporary understanding of how nature-rich spaces benefit children developmentally and emotionally.
How do we assess whether children are the beneficiaries of this? How should contemporary understanding inform the new early childhood education and care (ECEC) build? This is a domain that requires an early year’s climate strategy.
Strong frameworks. Partial operationalisation
NQS Quality Area 3 recognises that the physical environment significantly impacts children’s experiences. The EYLF embeds connection to Country, environmental responsibility and wellbeing as core elements of early education.
These are structural commitments.
Yet nowhere in our national system do we measure whether early learning environments reflect current developmental science about nature-rich play. There is no national dataset on children’s lived access to biodiverse outdoor environments.
No ecological design assurance mechanism is aligned with QA3. No child-level participation channel in environmental planning. We assess compliance. We do not yet assess ecological quality affordances within ECEC services.
Nature is developmental infrastructure
The research base is no longer ambiguous. Access to biodiverse outdoor environments supports:
- emotional regulation
- executive function
- risk competence
- physical health
- social collaboration
- environmental identity formation
In the first five years — when 90 per cent of brain development occurs — environment is not decorative or a place where children “let off steam”.
It is formative.
If environments must be “fit for purpose”, we must ask: fit for which purpose?
If the purpose of early education is to enhance learning and development, then environments must be evaluated against contemporary knowledge about how development occurs.
Nature-rich environments are not just aesthetic enhancements. They are developmental infrastructure.
A structural proof of concept
There are some services demonstrating and working towards what alignment looks like.
At our early learning centre in Woden Valley in Canberra, a deliberate investment in a nature pedagogy leader and biodiversity-led outdoor design has shown what happens when research is translated into environmental architecture.
The transformation did not rely on major capital works. It relied on leadership capacity and intentional design to transform traditional play spaces into nature rich zones, one small project at a time, with the children.
In the process, children engaged in sustained ecological investigation. They developed environmental vocabulary, risk competence and collaborative problem-solving. Families reported increased outdoor confidence beyond the service gate. Educators observed improved emotional regulation and dispositions for learning.
Nothing in the NQS prevented this. Nothing in the EYLF mandated it.
The difference was translation.
Frameworks articulated the values. Contemporary research and consultation with stakeholders informed the program’s nature, pedagogy, and leadership operationalised them. This is not a boutique innovation. It is a structural proof of concept.
If one service can operationalise ecological literacy in this way, the question becomes systemic: why is this dependent on local leadership rather than embedded in national design expectations?
The gap is a mechanism
Australia already:
- embeds sustainability in the EYLF
- requires environmental responsibility under QA3.2.3
- values connection to Country
- commits to child wellbeing and participation
What we lack is instrumentation.
A modern system should be able to answer: How many children have daily access to biodiverse outdoor space? Where are inequities in ecological access? How does environmental design correlate with wellbeing outcomes?
We cannot manage what we do not measure.
Leadership as infrastructure
The role of a nature pedagogy leader is not an enrichment add-on. It is a translation mechanism and nature pedagogy assurance.
Frameworks articulate intent.
Leaders translate that intent into space, practice and measurable outcomes. If ecological literacy is developmental infrastructure, then leadership capacity is delivery infrastructure. This does not require rewriting the NQS or EYLF. It requires building the bridge between aspiration and assurance.
Gabby Millgate is presenting the Early Years Climate Strategy on 11 March at UTS. Details here: https://luma.com/ppf8eavc.
