Today the Australian Government announced the development of future policies to improve the safety of children in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector.
The government will collaborate with stakeholders including state and territory regulators, the Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) and the sector to develop future policies to strengthen quality and safety through the Child Care Subsidy (CCS).
The vast majority of providers and early childhood educators are dedicated professionals who care deeply about safety and child development and child education.
Australia's National Quality Framework is a comprehensive national regulatory system to ensure high-quality and safe early childhood education and care is provided but more can be done to take action against the small proportion of poor performing providers to lift their standard of care.
These policies will look to use the Family Assistance Law and Australian Government regulatory levers to support the role of state and territory regulators to ensure compliance with the National Quality Framework (NQF).
The policies will target providers persistently failing to meet quality and safety standards, including:
- preventing new applications for service approval from a provider when their existing services are not meeting the National Quality Framework (NQF) and/or who have repeated breaches of the Education and Care Services National Law, until the performance of existing services improves
- broadening Child Care Subsidy compliance activity to consider multiple recorded breaches of the National Law and a provider's track record of quality ratings under the NQF, targeting the most at risk services.
These policies will look to restrict access to Australian Government funding being provided to, and to slow the growth of, providers who are continually not meeting the National Quality Framework, and/or who have repeated breaches of the Education and Care Services National Law.
Through this process the Australian Government will also consider further strengthening of regulatory powers and enforcement, including:
- requiring providers to correctly pay staff as a condition for continued CCS approval
- enabling authorised officers conducting CCS compliance activities to conduct spot checks and gain access to service premises.
Implementation of these potential measures, including their timing, will be subject to further consultations and decisions by Government.
Minister for Early Childhood Education Dr Anne Aly said:
"We know that the overwhelming majority of services and people in the sector do the right thing, but if you're failing to deliver quality and safe early childhood education you shouldn't have access to government funding and you shouldn't be working in the sector.
"We're taking swift and divisive action to ensure child safety and improve quality and in the early childhood education sector. I expect state and territory governments to fulfill their regulatory obligations and ensure early childhood education services in their jurisdictions are meeting our world leading quality standards."
For more information, read the Ministers' media release