Crackdown on SA childcare centres finds 'half not meeting standards'

Australia Broadcast Center

7 days ago

A crackdown on childcare centres in South Australia found half were not meeting national quality standards, a parliamentary committee has heard.
Giving evidence in the budget estimates committee on Monday, Education Minister Blair Boyer and his department heads said $7.11 million in additional funding had been given to the Education Standards Board over three years.
The funding was the result of a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care, and has allowed the board to more than double the number of compliance officers from 18 to 39 full time equivalents.
Acting chief executive of the Education Standards Board, Sean Heffernan, told the committee that before the funding increase, some services had gone for up to a decade without being assessed.
"There has been such a big gap between assessment and rating visits so where there has been a service that hasn't been assessed or rated potentially between eight or 10 years," he said.
"What we were finding though was a large number of services at that time, given the gap between the assessment ratings, 50 per cent of those were receiving a 'working towards'."
There are four rating categories under national quality standards: "significant improvement required", "working towards national quality standard", "meeting national quality standard" and "exceeding national quality standard".
Mr Heffernan said the number of services receiving a "working towards" rating had dropped since the initial crackdown.
"What we have done is introduce a pre-assessment and rating visit, which is around three months before their assessment and rating actually commences, which then determines areas of compliance or areas that might need focus," he said.
"What that has done is reduce that significantly down to 17 per cent."
But Mr Heffernan said 17 per cent is still above the national average of nine per cent.
The committee was also told there had been an increase in childcare staff being banned from practising.
In the 2023-24 financial year, three staff were issued with prohibition notices and two entered into enforceable undertakings.
In this financial year, five staff were issued with prohibition notices and nine entered into enforceable undertakings.
Education Minister Blair Boyer said that increase was also because of the increase in assessments.
"The number of visits to early childhood education and care services increased by 72 per cent on previous years," he said.
"With 2024-25 seeing a further 23 per cent increase on top of 2023-24 through increased assessments and ratings and introducing some proactive monitoring."
Shadow Education Minister Heidi Girolamo said the numbers were concerning and asked for more details about which childcare centres the action related to.
"It's one thing to be able to go through and do these assessments," she said.
"It's the next steps that are important to make sure these childcare centres are given enough support to make sure that they can make these improvements to make sure children are kept safe," she said.
Mr Boyer told the committee the Office for Early Childhood Development has a "quality uplift program" to help raise standards at childcare centres.