By Emily Kowal and Nigel Gladstone
Warning: Graphic content
NSW parents are being warned that childcare centres are operating on years-old quality assessments, with widespread use of waivers allowing centres to continue despite not meeting standards for staffing and facilities.
An independent review into the childcare sector by former deputy NSW Ombudsman Chris Wheeler, published last month, found 407 of the state’s 6000 centres were not meeting national quality standards. The number has since risen to 424.
But another 550 centres have not been assessed for their proficiency in the past six years, a Herald analysis can reveal.
As the state government looks to increase transparency, educators say parents are being left in the dark as to their centre’s true quality and performance.
‘She was just screaming and screaming’
Rebecca Lewis knew something was wrong the moment she arrived at her Central Coast daycare centre to pick up then 21-month-old Delilah.
Her baby, who loved clapping and singing, was in the arms of an educator and silent.
Rebecca Lewis with her children Delilah and Billy. Credit: Janie Barrett
“It was pretty weird because she’s pretty independent,” she said.
Lewis drove her unusually quiet baby home. That’s when the screaming started.
“She was just screaming and screaming … I was in full-blown panic mode, I rushed straight to the hospital,” Lewis said.
An X-ray revealed Delilah had a badly broken elbow. Lewis said CCTV she viewed from the centre showed Delilah falling off a slide onto concrete covered with fake grass.
“No one was watching her,” Lewis said.
“She walks up to an educator, and this is what broke my heart the most, the educator just turns her back and goes to do something else. Didn’t pick her up, didn’t check on her. She’s screaming.”
Delilah Lewis with her broken arm in 2023.Credit:
Delilah was in a cast for six weeks. The centre was reported and an investigation revealed its playground was not compliant.
The incident occurred in 2023. Records show that, at that time, the centre was “working towards” the national standards.
No way for parents to know when something goes wrong
There is no public database of incidents at childcare centres. Parents will know if a centre has experienced a compliance issue only if they ask to view their records.
A spokesperson for the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority encouraged parents to do this “as part of their conversations with their service”, noting providers must have these details readily available for families.
While parents can search registers held by the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), and on government website Starting Blocks, early childhood academic Professor Gabrielle Meagher said these ratings were not always a true reflection of quality, with waivers used to pass centres not meeting some benchmarks.
The most common use for waivers concerns staff ratios, she said. ACECQA data shows 20 per cent of centres in Sydney’s outer south-west and 15 per cent in the south-west, Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury, and Central Coast regions have a staffing waiver in place.
“With such a waiver in place, the centre doesn’t have the number of highly trained educators it should have, and the educational program and leadership of the staff is likely to suffer,” Meagher said.
She urged parents to ask when the service was last assessed, what type of assessment it received and if it had since changed ownership: of the 5313 NSW centres meeting or exceeding national standards, 533 have changed ownership since their assessment, which Meagher said can “significantly impact” quality.
“When a centre changes hands, it keeps its existing rating until a new assessment is done, often years later,” she said.
“The big risk is when the new owner has a business model that aims to drive down costs in ways that undermine quality. As the share of large for-profit chains increases, so does this risk.”
‘You put on a great service the day they are there’
The state regulatory authority maintains it has visited every NSW childcare centre in the past 18 months. These visits inform whether a reassessment should occur.
But workers in the sector say regulators can see a very different centre to the one children are cared for in each day. One childcare worker, who spoke anonymously to protect her employment, said centres can “say the right things, and tick the right boxes” to pass inspection, and “slide” once they are rated.
“You put on a great service the day you know they [the assessors] are going to be there; it’s not properly reflective of what that service is,” she said.
Saville agreed that ratings “don’t mean anything”.
“I have known so many centres that have been in breach, have had [incident] reports to the department, and yet they are listed as exceeding expectations,” she said.
In 2023, NSW South Coast mother Carina Worley’s three-year-old daughter suffered a severe injury at a centre that was meeting standards.
About 11.30am, the centre called, advising Worley her daughter had a “slight cut to her lip” but there was no need to leave work.
Carina Worley’s child suffered a serious mouth injury at daycare, but did not receive treatment for hours. Credit:
But three hours later she received another call from the centre: they had just checked inside her daughter’s mouth and realised her teeth were pushed entirely through her gums.
Worley said her daughter went hours without first aid, due to what she believes were “issues with staffing”.
It is not known if the centre had a staffing waiver in place. However, Worley said staffing ratios seemed “off”.
At the time of the injury, the centre’s “meeting” standards rating was two years old. When reassessed in 2024, it was downgraded to “working towards”.
Worley said she was shocked years had passed between assessments. “If we had known that, we definitely wouldn’t have enrolled her,” she said
The Wheeler report found NSW had three times the rate of confirmed breaches of Victoria or Queensland in 2023 and 2024. However, it noted this may reflect “more effective reporting and monitoring” after NSW introduced expectations that centres receive a regulator visit every 18 months.
The state government has promised to publish more information on incidents, compliance checks and waivers, mandate CCTV in centres and require providers to notify families of investigations for serious breaches in response to the report. It will also establish an independent regulator that can operate beyond national laws.
Acting Education Minister Courtney Houssos said she also “strongly endorsed” a federal plan to cut off funding for childcare centres that repeatedly fail to meet safety and quality standards.
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