Edition 74, January 2010

COAG endorses national childcare regulation

COAG endorses national childcare regulationThe December 2009 meeting of COAG saw agreement on the National Quality Agenda for early childhood education and care and outside school hours care.

The agreement recognises the central importance of early childhood development to the wellbeing of Australia's children and to the future wellbeing and productivity of the nation.

This new framework will deliver better quality services and promote good educational and social outcomes for more than one million children attending long day care, family day care, outside school hours care and preschool.  The framework will: 

  • improve interactions between children and carers based on better qualified staff and lower staff-to-child ratios which allow for more quality time to focus on individual children's needs
  • provide national uniform standards including in the areas of education, health and safety, physical environment and staffing
  • introduce a new transparent ratings system which will provide parents with better information to compare easily services and make informed choices about which service best meets their child's needs.

This new national approach will replace the current licensing and accreditation processes undertaken by states and the Commonwealth.  Under the new national framework, individual services will only deal with one organisation for quality assessment, reducing the regulatory burden on over 10,000 services.

A national body will guide the management of the framework, with administration of regulation undertaken by state agencies. The national body will be located in Sydney. Victoria will host the legislation for the new system.

The National Quality Standard will begin to be implemented from 1 July 2010, with full implementation from 1 January 2012.  Responding to stakeholder concerns, services and families will have time to adjust to the changes, with the staff to child ratio and staff qualifications requirements implemented progressively over a number of years.

For more information visit www.deewr.gov.au/EarlyChildhood/LatestNews/Pages/ImprovementsToECEC.aspx 

This page was generated on 29 January, 2010

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