NSW: Fifth of childcare centres don’t meet standards, which ones revealed
More than 1000 early childcare centres and before and after school services in NSW do not meet national standards, according to shocking data. FIND OUT WHICH ONES IN OUR INTERACTIVE SPECIAL.
Manly
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More than a fifth of childcare centres operating in NSW do not meet national standards, according to the latest ratings.
Data from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority show there are currently 1111 childcare and before and after school services across the state that do not meet the National Quality Standard (NQS).
From data taken on October 16, 2020, there were 1106 centres still ‘working towards NQS’, while five had the worst rating and in need of ‘significant improvement’.
Those five centres include the Kids Activity Centre Ltd in Mount Druitt; Leeton Early Learning Centre in Leeton; Before and After School Care at St Aidan’s in Maroubra, Up and Ready Family Day Care in Wollongong and St Mark’s Child Care Centre Oakhurst Outside School Hours Care.
They were all assessed and rated as needing significant improvement between December 2019 and August 2020.
NewsLocal has contacted them requesting comment.
It comes as NSW Education revealed it has shutdown 16 childcare centres or services this year due to not meeting various requirements.
Childcare centres and before and after school services are assessed on seven criteria – education, health and safety, physical environment, staffing, relationships with children, partnerships with families and communities and governance and leadership.
In NSW 15 childcare centres and services have achieved the highest rating of excellent.
A further 1353 are exceeding the standards required and 2724 are meeting requirements.
The NQS rating system is just one of a number of checks that are undertaken by a number of authorities and agencies.
A spokesman for NSW Education said the NQS “is not a pass or fail system”.
“The quality of services is measured on a spectrum and the overall quality rating of a service is determined by their performance against the seven quality areas,” the spokesman said.
“In many cases a service may only be ‘working towards’ in one or two areas or even only one element of one area but this will impact their overall rating.
“In the last five years the proportion of services rated meeting the national standard or above has risen from 58.4 per cent to 78.1 per cent so there has been a significant increase.”
The spokesman went onto to say that the department works closely with all services to drive quality improvement and provides resources and training for education and care educators.
“A number of programs have been developed to help services lift their performance against the NQS,” the NSW Education spokesman said.
One program includes face-to-face training and support, online and telephone support, and the provision of resources to support quality improvement.
The spokesman said childcare centres and services with the worst rating are closely monitored by NSW Education and where the department identifies a significant risk to children a service will be immediately suspended or cancelled.
“So far this year the department has cancelled four centre based services and 12 family day care services,” the spokesman said.
“One service had no published rating, one was ‘significant improvement required’ and the rest were ‘working towards’ the National Quality Standard.”