Goodstart Early Learning, Australia’s largest not-for-profit provider of early childhood education and care (ECEC), has a clear purpose: to ensure children have the learning, development and wellbeing outcomes they need for school and life.

This commitment drives targeted investments in quality, inclusion, and accessibility. Since 2022, Goodstart has partnered with SVA to design and apply a bespoke Social Impact Study, the first of its kind in Australia’s early learning sector. The study provides a robust, evidence-informed framework to measure the economic and social value created by Goodstart’s social purpose investments. By demonstrating how investments in quality, inclusion and advocacy deliver measurable benefits for children, families and communities, the study strengthens Goodstart’s ability to track impact, inform decisions, and build the case for systemic change.

Goodstart Early Learning logo
$321M social value from $62.3M, 5:1 ROI
17 outcomes across 3 stakeholder groups
4 years powering Goodstart’s Impact Study

Overall impact

As Goodstart reports in its annual report each year, the Social Impact Study demonstrates that Goodstart’s investments deliver significant returns for children, families, and the broader community, including government. For every dollar invested in social purpose, the study estimated that $5.11 of social value was created in 2024. These benefits include improved child development outcomes, increased parental workforce participation, and reduced government expenditure on education, health, and welfare. Key drivers of these benefits included higher attendance levels, improved quality ratings, and greater representation of vulnerable children compared to sector averages and historical figures.

This work strengthens decision-making, reinforces Goodstart’s leadership in social change, and provides a framework to track impact, while advancing its understanding of the value it creates and building the case for investment in high-quality early learning for all children.

Background

The ECEC sector continues to grapple with persistent challenges, including developmental vulnerability, barriers to workforce participation, and inequitable access to quality services. In addition to operating more than 600 centres nationwide, Goodstart invests in areas that go beyond regulatory requirements, such as evidence-based inclusive practice above minimum standards, quality improvement programs, inclusion programs, increasing access and affordability, and advocacy for better policy settings to address persistent challenges in the sector. To deepen understanding of how Goodstart tackles persistent sector challenges in line with contemporary research, the Social Impact Study was developed to measure the additional value Goodstart creates compared to sector and historical benchmarks. This evidence-based approach highlights Goodstart’s unique contribution to improving outcomes for children and families and strengthens advocacy for systemic change.

Vision and objectives

The project aimed to:

  • Develop and maintain a bespoke, evidence-informed methodology to quantify the observable impact of Goodstart’s social purpose investments.
  • Enable comparisons with the broader sector to support how Goodstart understands and articulates its impact and informs future investment decisions.
  • Ensure the study is replicable and allows for further data collection and longitudinal analysis to track trends over time.
  • Provide actionable insights to guide strategy, advocacy, and continuous improvement.
  • Build a platform for deeper understanding, including expanding outcome measures and engaging in research to improve accuracy and validity.

Role we played

SVA partnered with Goodstart to design and implement the Social Impact Study through the following key activities:

  • Developed a robust, bespoke methodology to value outcomes for children, parents, and government.
  • Aggregated and analysed measures of Goodstart’s performance on four parameters (quality, attendance, vulnerability, and service availability).
  • Compared key measures to sector and historical benchmarks, and estimated contributions to policy and systemic change through a novel methodology.
  • Integrated new research and addressed data challenges to refine the methodology and maintain validity and credibility of results.
  • Delivered actionable insights to inform strategy, guide investment decisions, and strengthen impact communication.
  • Built interactive Power BI dashboards to improve understanding and engagement with outcome measures.

Meet the team

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