The use of ICT for administration and information management in early childhood education

Although computers and ICT are likely to be used in planning, administration, and information management in many early childhood education settings, there is little research which specifically investigates this aspect of ICT use in early childhood education. ICT also presents opportunities for sharing and exchange of information between different services and agencies involved in children’s care and education, but it is difficult to locate examples of this in the literature.

Some relevant messages can be drawn from international literature about computerisation of systems for managing and sharing information about children who are looked after by social services. For example: the need for systems to make it easy to enter information and produce reports that save on administrative work; the need to establish common goals between ICT specialists, managers, and those who gather and input data; and the need to establish common data exchange standards to allow for data transfer between systems. Individual early childhood education centres may be using a variety of business and education administration packages. This may offer flexibility for individual centres to customise packages for their specific needs. However, it may also reduce the ease of communication and exchange of information between different systems and different locations.