Quality Improvement Plan Examples: How to Write Better QIP Goals and Actions

Start with the issue, not the solution

Knowing what your service wants to improve is often the easy part. Turning that idea into a useful Quality Improvement Plan goal can be harder.

Goals such as “improve family engagement” or “support children’s agency” may point in the right direction, but they are often too broad to guide action. A strong QIP goal should make it clear what needs to improve, what outcome you want, what actions will be taken, who is responsible, how progress will be reviewed, and what evidence will show that improvement has occurred.

Before writing a goal, understand what is actually happening. If families are not completing surveys, the issue may be that surveys are too long, families prefer informal conversations, or they do not see how their feedback influences decisions. A stronger goal might be to create more accessible and meaningful opportunities for families to contribute to service decision-making.

Example 1: Children’s agency

Too broad: Improve children’s agency.

Better goal: Strengthen children’s influence over program planning by creating regular opportunities for children to propose, develop and evaluate experiences.

• Review how children’s ideas are currently captured.
• Introduce regular planning conversations with children.
• Provide ways for children to suggest ideas.
• Document where children’s contributions influence the program.
• Review the process with children and educators.
• Evidence might include children identifying ideas they contributed, programming showing children’s influence, and educators explaining how children’s perspectives changed planning.

Example 2: Family engagement

Too broad: Improve family engagement.

Better goal: Strengthen two-way engagement with families by creating accessible opportunities for them to contribute to programming and service improvement.

• Ask families how they prefer to provide feedback.
• Trial short, targeted feedback questions.
• Provide both digital and face-to-face options.
• Share examples of changes made following family input.
• Evidence might include family contributions influencing service decisions, broader participation, and families understanding how their feedback is used.

Example 3: Critical reflection

Too broad: Educators will critically reflect more. More reflection does not necessarily mean better reflection.

Better goal: Strengthen critical reflection by supporting educators to examine why practices occur, consider different perspectives and use reflection to inform change.

• Review current reflective practices.
• Introduce useful reflection prompts.
• Include practice-focused discussions in team meetings.
• Record changes that result from reflection.
• Evidence might include reflections moving beyond description, educators considering alternative perspectives, and documented examples of reflection leading to changed practice.

Example 4: Professional development

Too broad: Provide more professional development. Training is an action, not necessarily an improvement.

Better goal: Develop a professional learning approach that links educator development with identified practice needs and QIP priorities.

• Identify development priorities.
• Link training to QIP goals.
• Provide targeted professional learning.
• Follow up on how learning has been applied.
• Evidence might include educators demonstrating new skills, changed practice following training, and professional learning clearly linked to service priorities.

Goal vs action vs success measure

These are easy to confuse. Consider this example:

Goal: Strengthen opportunities for families to influence service decision-making.

Action: Introduce a short family feedback question each fortnight.

Success measure: Family contributions can be linked to documented changes in service practice.

A common mistake is writing an action as the goal. If you introduce a children’s committee, ask why. If the answer is to strengthen children’s participation in service decisions, that is the actual goal. The committee is simply one way of trying to achieve it.

Do not create improvements just to fill your QIP

Your service does not need an improvement against every Quality Area. Focus on your key priorities rather than trying to address every Standard and Element at once.

A service might have several priorities in Quality Area 1, one in Quality Area 6, and none currently in Quality Area 3. Your QIP should reflect your real improvement priorities, not issues created simply to make the document look complete.

Record progress as you go

A QIP should show the improvement journey, not just the final result. Instead of recording only “Status: Complete”, record what happened along the way.

For example: March — educators identified concerns with the afternoon transition. April — feedback gathered from children and staff. May — a more flexible transition process was trialled. June — educator observations showed fewer recurring conflicts, so the new approach was adopted.

These short updates show reflection, action and evaluation. If an improvement does not work, record that too. Continuous improvement does not mean every strategy succeeds the first time; it means you tried something, reviewed the result and adjusted your approach.

What is different because we did this work?

When reviewing an improvement, ask: What is different now because we did this work?

If the answer is only that you held a meeting, completed training, updated a policy or purchased equipment, you are probably describing an action rather than an outcome. Go further: What changed for children? What changed for families? What changed in educator practice? What changed in the quality of the service? That is where meaningful evidence of improvement sits.

A simple structure for stronger QIP goals

For each improvement, consider recording what you have identified, what is happening now, what you want to achieve, what should be different, what actions will help you get there, who will keep the improvement moving, what evidence will demonstrate improvement, and what has happened so far.

A useful QIP does not need complicated language. It simply needs to clearly show what your service is trying to improve, what you are doing about it, and whether those actions are making a difference.

Manage your QIP improvements in one place

QIPify helps ECEC and OSHC services manage improvement goals, actions, responsibilities, progress and evidence in one place.

Instead of trying to reconstruct your improvement journey later, you can build your QIP as the work happens. The aim is to keep the improvement work visible and useful for your team.

Important information

This article provides general information about Quality Improvement Plans under the National Quality Framework. Services should refer to current ACECQA guidance and applicable legislation when determining their regulatory obligations.