By Christopher Harris
A daycare operator that recorded 502 breaches has maintained its quality rating accreditation in what has been labelled a failure of the state’s childcare regulator to be adequately transparent with parents.
Education Minister Prue Car has announced an independent review to examine a rise in safety breaches in NSW daycare centres and how they are handled by the regulator, the Early Childhood and Care Regulatory Authority.
NSW upper house Greens MP Abigail Boyd.Credit: Oscar Colman
NSW upper house Greens MP Abigail Boyd told a budget estimates hearing on Tuesday that Kids Academy Spring Farm childcare centre in Sydney’s south-west had recorded numerous breaches.
Documents from the Department of Education’s Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority show childcare provider Affinity, which operates 101 services including Kids Academy Spring Farm, had 502 confirmed breaches of inappropriate discipline in the past four years and more than 2000 cases failing to protect children from hazards. There were dozens of cases where Affinity’s centres failed to inform authorities of cases where serious incidents occurred.
In a statement on Tuesday night, Affinity Education said they believed the numbers provided are grossly inaccurate.
“For example, company records for 2024 show a total of nine breaches across all our centres in NSW under [offence to use inappropriate discipline] as compared to the figure of 133 in the information being reported.
“For [offences relating to protecting children from harm and hazards] our records show a total of 42 breaches across all our centres in NSW in 2024 compared to 519 in the materials being reported.”
A Kids Academy Spring Farm spokesperson said they were committed to upholding the safety, rights and wellbeing of all children. In the event of a safety breach, they said they would proactively contact a child’s family, conduct a full investigation and terminate staff in serious cases.
“While we are bound by privacy from discussing the details, we have taken a number of measures to ensure the services and quality of care provided at Kids Academy Spring Farm is consistent with our usual high standards and expectations,” the spokesperson said.
According to a government website, the centre qualifies for the childcare subsidy and has a quality rating of “working towards” the national quality standard.
Car said she had commissioned an independent review to be conducted by former deputy NSW ombudsman Chris Wheeler.
“As minister, I need assurance that any increase in breaches is a result of an increase in activity by the regulator and no other factors that are inadvertently driving bad behaviour,” Car said in a statement after the hearing.
Boyd welcomed the review. “I’m very concerned that it’s only being announced today, ahead of this session in budget estimates, on the back of almost four months of what I see as a real reluctance from the department to release information,” she said.
“We’re talking about wrists being pulled and hair being pulled and kids being dragged along floors,” Boyd said.
Boyd’s office later clarified that she was speaking about shocking examples across the NSW childcare system generally.
“That’s just the minor stuff, and yet this is still a service that if a parent looked [at] on site, they would see it as meeting standards.”
A Department of Education spokesman said the documents provided to parliament were incorrectly titled. “It was human error when providing 12 boxes of documents. We are unable to alter it,” he said.
Boyd noted that in the childcare sector, a high proportion of centres were privately operated. “Many of these centres are backed up by private equity, whose mandate is to get as much profit out of it and to squeeze costs wherever possible.”
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clarification
This story has been updated to reflect the fact the documents provided to parliament were incorrectly labelled. The 502 confirmed breaches were recorded across all sites operated by childcare provider Affinity. Kids Academy Spring Farm service recorded 77 confirmed breaches since 2022. These include ongoing investigations. It has also been updated to include a statement from Affinity Education.