Judging Guidelines

Thank you for agreeing to be one of our independent judges this year. The following are your guidelines to judging the nominations in your respective groups (ie (A) judges for the finalists and (B) judges for the winners).

We look forward to celebrating your aggregated decisions at the Excellence in Early Childhood Education Awards Gala Night (this year on Saturday evening, 12 September 2026).

1. Every nomination must be considered by at least 3 judges.
   

2. Judges considering nominations must ensure they do not have or may perceive to have any pecuniary and non-pecuniary interests to avoid conflict or the perception of positive/negative bias on any/all nomination(s).
   

3. New nominator(s) must be afforded priority consideration as finalists unless their nomination(s) cannot be considered on the grounds of merit.
   

4. Nominations must be from services that are rated overall as at least Meeting the National Quality Standards. 
   

5. Nominations cannot be prejudiced by the results of past Excellence in Early Childhood Education Awards.

   
   

6. Services’ nomination(s) cannot be prejudiced by the number of nomination(s) they have submitted.
   

7. Nomination(s) must be judged only on their own merits within each Award Category.
   

8. Nomination(s) from services associated with the ACA NSW Executive Committee (members who are all serving as elected volunteers) cannot be prejudiced against.
   

9. To protect the integrity and reputation of the Excellence in Early Childhood Education Awards, nomination(s) from service(s) associated with publicly referenced child safety failure(s) and/or serious incident/incidences cannot be accepted.
   

10. To be accepted, nominations must be complete and comply with all eligibility requirements as published in the Official Nominations Guidelines.
    

11. Each Award Category must not have more than 18 finalists from 18 different services.
    

12. Per Award Category, nominations linked to Approved Provider(s) commonly considered to have large number of services must be balanced alongside those other Approved Provider(s) with smaller number of service(s).
    

13. Per Award Category, balancing the number of nominations as finalists can be on the basis of population spread in metropolitan vs regional/rural/remote areas while maintaining merit considerations.
    

14. Nominations citing graduate diplomas as being equal to degree qualified early childhood teachers are not to be accepted (as in alignment with the NSW Education Standards Authority).
    

15. Scoring of nominations must be on merit per Award Category's criteria question while cognisant of its relativity to other nominations’ corresponding criteria answers within each Award Category.
    

16. Judges can make consensus decisions on merit and use discretions that advance and protect the integrity of the Awards.
    

17. Complete and perpetual confidentiality of the nominations, judging, content and intellectual property are required of all registered judges.
    

18. The ACA NSW Executive Committee members and the ACA NSW staff cannot be involved in the judging process.

For any further information/clarification, please contact ACA NSW via 1300 556 330 or hello@eeceawards.com.au

PUBLISHED: 30 JANUARY 2026