Northern Territory’s best and worst suburbs for childcare

Australia’s 16,552 child care services have been rated on quality and value. See list of best and worst in the NT.

Exclusive: A remote town in the Northern Territory is home to one of Australia’s best childcares, beating other major states including South Australia and Tasmania.

An analysis by KindiCare, an app that compares the quality and cost of daycare centres, crowned Yirrkala Preschool on the East Arnhem region as the third best in the country.

But it was a blip in an overall unflattering report card for the NT, which ranked the third worst state or territory in Australia for childcare.

KindiCare founder Benjamin Balk said similar to the South Australia and Tasmania, the Northern Territory had a more diverse population and jobs demographic compared to NSW and Victoria.

“Like we see in other capital cities, quality tends to be higher on average in more densely populated urban areas versus regional areas,” he said.

“There are clear exceptions to these trends, however, as shown by Yirrkala Preschool which has the highest rating in the Northern Territory despite being located in a remote community.

“This shows the importance of always comparing quality in your local area to understand how childcare centres compare both on quality and cost.”

Yirrkala preschool in the Northern Territory made it to the top eight early childhood education and care services in Australia to achieve a rating of over nine. Picture: Supplied

Darwin and the Palmerston suburbs of Rosebery and Bakewell topped the list of best-performing childcare locations.

Howard Springs, Alyangula, Nhulunbuy and Leanyer were rated the worst.

Using Federal Government quality ratings combined with user rankings, KindiCare assessed Australia’s 16,552 child care services between May and November this year.

KindiCare’s rating system took into account the quality of care and value for money offered by the early learning services.

“You’ve got just as much chance of a poor performing centre being in the heart of the city as it being in a regional area,” Mr Balk said of the results, crunched for the first time.

Tasmania was the worst-performing state overall, while Queensland’s Thursday Island was the worst performing location nationally.

“What the top and bottom centres highlight overall is that it is important for every family to look in their local area to see how quality compares against the national benchmarks,” Mr Balk said.

“And also how centres in an area compare against each other when considering suitability and value for money.

“Whilst not black and white, regional areas do tend to perform worse than metro areas, particularly in Queensland, Victoria and NSW where participation in early learning is the highest.”

Across the country, family day care services continued to perform lower than all other early childhood education and care types.

Mr Balk said it came largely down to the service being under resourced compared to other parts of the sector.

“If you look at the average childcare centre, you can see centres have anywhere from 28 to 180 children in a centre and so they tend to be more structured,” he said.

“When it comes to family daycare, they tend to operate under a different structure where individual educators might have four children in their home that they’re looking after.

“So there’s not the same sort of structure and rigour as what you see in centre based care, which is why it tends to underperform.”

NT BEST PERFORMING SUBURBS FOR CHILDCARE

1. Darwin

2. Rosebery

3. Bakewell

4. Nakara

5. Nightcliff

6. Berrimah

7. Stuart Park

8. Wagaman

9. Woodroffe

10. Katherine East

NT WORST PERFORMING SUBURBS FOR CHILDCARE

1. Howard Springs

2. Alyangula

3. Nhulunbuy

4. Leanyer

5. Humpty Doo

6. Katherine

7. Karama

8. Parap

9. Malak

10. Durack