331 Qld childcares failed: State’s worst centres named

A staggering amount of childcare centres have been slapped with a fail rating following an independent audit of facilities in Queensland. It comes as 331 worst centres are named. SEE THE LIST

The majority of Queensland child care centres and kindergartens are meeting or exceeding government standards but at least 331 across the state could be doing better to care for our kids.

An app which launched last year has released its latest Queensland rankings to The Courier-Mail to reveal the state’s best and worst kindergartens.

KindiCare has drawn from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority ratings as well as reviews from Google and the KindiCare platform.

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“My wife and I went through the childcare journey ourselves and something we found talking with other families was that no one really understood the government ratings and trying to compare them against reviews,” KindiCare founder Benjamin Balk said.

All of Queensland’s childcare centres have been rated.

“The KindiCare rating provides a much finer scale and takes into account both community feedback as well as government feedback and other attributes as well.”

In total, 331 centres were graded ‘fair’ and could do better, while 329 had ‘excellent’ ratings, 1,055 were graded ‘very good’ and another 1,232 had ‘good’ ratings.

Ashgrove Memorial Kindergarten Inc topped the list in January for centres rated “excellent” with its score of 9.89.

SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE FULL TABLE OF ‘EXCELLENT’ AND ‘GOOD’ RATED CENTRES

Alexandra-Mooloolaba Community Kindergarten and Aspley East Kindergarten were close behind with scores of 9.79.

Aspley East director Lynelle Woodrow was pleasantly surprised by the KindiCare rating and was unaware just how beneficial the centre’s positive public feedback was.

“We know for sure that it’s our relationships with the children and the relationships between the families that make the difference,” Ms Woodrow said.

“But the most important thing in picking a childcare centre is going with your gut.

“Go with the feeling you have and trust your intuition, because that’s often the feedback we get from families at our kindy.”

Alexandra-Mooloolaba Community Kindergarten’s Marianna van der Zypp believed the difference at her centre was the value placed on parent input.

She said the traditional kindergarten, divided into two groups, benefited from longstanding staff and regular social events for the centre community.

KindiCare is yet to provide ratings for 174 of Queensland’s 3124 child care centres but of those rated, Moura Child Care Centre and Tagai State College Moa Island (Kubin Ngurpay Lag) Kindergarten had the lowest of the ‘fair’ rankings, rated 6.28.

The National Quality Framework’s latest data from last month classified the Moa Island centre and Moura centre as “very remote” and “outer regional respectively”, and working towards National Quality Standard.

Kinta Kids Child Care Centre at North Rockhampton, Tagai State College Mabuiag Island (Mabuygiw Ngurpay Lag) Kindergarten and Bilby Family Day Care Group at Graceville ranked slightly higher at 6.38.

Mr Balk said the centres which fell to the bottom of the list often provided a crucial service to a regional area with less funding and resources than metropolitan centres.

“They tend to be more independent and you’re unlikely in regional areas to find some of those larger, expensive chains of childcare providers,” he said.

“In regional areas, sometimes it’s the access they have to resources and quality of staff (affecting their ratings).

“Early learning services are incredibly important for those communities.”

Mr Balk said affordability and accessibility in remote areas were crucial because children were at a disadvantage if they couldn’t access childcare in the first few years of their life.