Use Your Start Strong Funding Well.
Professional development and training are eligible operational costs under Start Strong funding. A Pocket Education partnership turns that eligible spend into a year of speech pathologist led capability building for your whole team.
What Start Strong covers
Start Strong is the NSW Government's funding program supporting affordable, quality preschool education in the years before school, across community preschools and preschool programs in long day care services.
Program guidelines allow funding to be spent on service operating costs, and professional development and training for staff sit among those eligible costs, which makes Start Strong one of the most straightforward pathways in the country for investing in your team's capability.
How Pocket Education fits
Where a Pocket Education Partnership Fits Start Strong
Quality preschool programs
Neuroaffirming, clinician-led practice lifts the quality of the program every child receives, which is the outcome Start Strong exists to support.
Eligible PD spend
Our subscriptions are professional development and training for your staff, delivered across the year rather than as a single workshop day.
Participation and inclusion
Educators equipped for neurodivergence, developmental delay and disability keep more children participating fully in the preschool program.
Evidence for your QIP
Strategies map to the EYLF V2.0 and Quality Areas 1, 5 and 6, so your Start Strong investment also produces assessment-ready evidence.
Start Strong guidelines are set by the NSW Department of Education and can change between funding years. Confirm eligible use with your program guidelines or funding contact before committing spend; we are happy to support that conversation.
Talk Through Your Funding on a Free Fit Call
We will map our partnership model against your funding and your centre's goals, honestly.
Or read our director's guide to PD funding.