State of childcare in NSW and Australia: Is an overhaul needed?

This is the second incident in less than a year following the conviction of a Gold Coast man in late 2024 for abuse committed between 2003 and 2022. The man was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 27 years, for rape and sexual assaults committed in childcare centres in Australia and overseas. He had pleaded guilty to 307 charges.

The events have prompted public outcry over whether childcare standards in Australia are sufficient to protect children’s safety.

In February, the NSW Deputy Premier commissioned an review into the NSW Department of Education as the regulatory authority for early childhood education and care. The review was conducted by former Deputy NSW Ombudsman Chris Wheeler (the Wheeler report) and the 166-page final report was publicly released on 26 June 2025.

The report set out 12 recommendations and identified key areas for action, including issuing a rating certificate with the time the service has been rated “working towards” the National Quality Standard (NQS). The certificate must be displayed in the reception area. Other recommendations include giving the NSW regulatory authority the discretion to install CCTVs that’s monitored by the centre’s management and recorded to the regulatory authority’s cloud so it can be used for any future investigations into serious incident reports. The report also recommended that the regulatory authority be set up as a separate agency.

In June, the Minns Government announced it will strengthen laws, increase fines for childcare centres who fail to meet the requisite standards and mandate the publication of safety and performance records as part of its reforms to increase transparency and restore trust in the early childhood education and care sector.

The Acting Minister for Education and Early Learning Courtney Houssos said that “Parents deserve to know that when they leave their children at an early learning centre or preschool, their child will be care for, respected and nurtured.

“When educators or operators break the rules and violate that trust, the public has a right to know.”

Professor Fay Hadley, Director of Education at the Macquarie School of Education at Macquarie University says there are “state and federal complexities in early childhood. …

“We like to use the term ‘early childhood education and care’ because it’s more than care, it’s actually educating children,” she says.

According to Hadley, “all early childhood settings across Australia are accredited under the National Quality Framework, which includes the ‘National Quality Standard.’ There are seven areas that early childhood centres have to meet for that national quality standard …

“[T]here’s some pretty basic standards across all centres. It’s around … the ratio, so how many children you can have … how big the inside or the outside area has to be depending on how many children you have accessing that, how many bathrooms, as well as qualifications of educators …,” she explains.

When it comes to the ratio between educators and children, the numbers vary depending on the age of the children and the number of staff. Hadley says the “best practice would be … there’s always at least four eyes on one child…,” she says.

Do staff shortages mean shortcuts?

According to Hadley, since 2020, “COVID really exacerbated staff shortages as we had an exodus of early childhood staff leaving the sector plus more centres opening so demand has not been able to be met,” she says.

Educators are required to hold at least a Certificate III qualification to work in a childcare centre. Hadley explains this is usually a six to 12 months TAFE or registered training organisation (RTO) course. She points out that due to big sector shortages, these trainees are counted as part of the ratio “whereas previously that would have not been approved, or not been allowed,” she says.

Hadley says there is a minimum level of qualification and staff are not permitted to be employed in an early childhood centre if they don’t have “at least ‘working towards’ a certificate III.”

According to Hadley, “at least 50 per cent of educators involved in direct care must hold or be actively working towards a Diploma level qualification.”

Hadley says while childcare service providers are required to have a certain number of qualified teachers depending on the size of the centre, “having them on the premises doesn’t necessarily mean they’re working with the children…”.

As more experienced educators quit their jobs or leave the sector altogether, trainees or those just starting out in their careers are left to learn on their own. “[W]e’ve lost the wise practitioners who would have guided those young people in what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate. …

“[T]here’s some really good organisations out there … doing amazing practice. But in general, what’s happened is because of this staff shortage … we’ve got very young or inexperienced educators who are still learning themselves … taking on more and more responsibility in the classroom …”

Is there a need to review qualifications and courses?

At present, most educational institutions offering early childhood require students to undertake professional placements in childcare centres to gain practical experience. Depending on the institution and the qualification, the length of practical experience can range from 80 to 115 days.

Some institutions allow students to undertake their practical placements at the student’s current place of employment.

Others, like Macquarie University, adopt a “mixed approach”, according to Hadley. “We don’t allow every placement to be in their early childhood setting. We want them to be experiencing other places, other ways of working and seeing different practice,” she says.

Hadley notes that while the overall length of time students are required to undertake placements has decreased, there is no empirical evidence or data demonstrating that a person who undertakes 60-, 80- or 100-day placements will be a better educator than someone who only does 40 days.

Requisite standards for early childhood centres

At present, early childhood education centres and other services are assessed against seven quality areas from educational program and practice, physical environment, staffing arrangements, to children’s health and safety, and governance and leadership.

Services can be assessed as being ‘excellent’, ‘exceeding’ the NQS, ‘meeting’, ‘working towards’ or requiring significant improvement.

Hadley explains that centres found not to be meeting the NQS have a short time frame to turn things around and show how they have improved their practice to meet the standard. She says they’re provided significant support to assist them to improve their practice. However, “[g]iven what’s happening in the sector at the moment, maybe ‘not meeting’… especially if it’s in quality area two which is your child safety, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to operate,” she says.

Whilst penalties can be handed out to services who breach the standards, Hadley says “If you are [a] multi-billion-dollar industry … you’re a company that’s got many, many services, it’s not a huge fine for you to have that breach…,” she says.

Is there a need for reform?

Following the release of the Wheeler report, the Minns government has already announced plans to introduce reforms to the sector.

Hadley believes this should be part of a broader conversation, recognising that one of the reasons that centres are seldom closed is because parents are worried they won’t be able to work. “[There is] this tension between early childhood education and care being about educating children … let’s be honest here – it’s about mothers returning to the workforce.”

She points to other nations that offer universal free childcare and says that we need to be examining Australian society as a whole and what could be done to support families in the first year after having their child. This includes helping families stay home with their child if they want to.

“[I] think we have an opportunity now to really try and untangle the very complex system we have and develop a system that would be much more equitable and would work much more effectively, but it requires states and territories and the federal government to cooperate and to really work hard together on this …,” she says.