Child Safety Reform
A national register, mandatory training and a mobile phone ban are just three of the big reforms emerging from today’s child safety in early childhood education and care (ECEC) meeting.
BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE
Child safety is something that’s very, very, very important to families and childcare professionals, and we’re pleased to report that our politicians feel the same.
After gathering for a child safety in ECEC meeting today, all of Australia’s Education Ministers have agreed to make big changes to better protect little learners.
Early Childhood Education Minister, Jess Walsh, has described these changes as, “The strongest and most significant package of child safety reforms in our nation’s history,” and here’s a wrap-up of the action which will soon be taken.
The pollies have agreed to set up a national register of early childhood educators, to keep children safe across state and territory borders.
This national register will be built from scratch and rolled out in stages, with each childcare worker's name and place of employment being the first details included.
In time, the worker’s employment history will also be included, so it will be noticeable if someone is moving quickly from one childcare centre, to another, to another.
The national register will also include information that ECEC regulators have, such as whether a person is under investigation or prohibited.
And childcare workers who are on the national register will stay on it when they resign from a childcare role, instead of disappearing from the record.
Date-wise, it’s anticipated that childcare providers will start filling out the national register from this December, and it will be up and running (and mandatory for childcare providers) in February 2026.
The Education Ministers have also agreed that mandatory national child safety training will roll out from next year for every single childcare centre employee, including upper management.
This training will be developed by experts at the Australian Centre for Child Protection to help drive ‘child safe cultures’ in ECEC; and it will build upon what people learn when gaining their ECEC qualifications – with a focus on learning how to detect when something unsafe is happening.
Mobile phones will be banned from all Australian childcare centres from September 2025, and CCTV is going into more of them.
The Australian government is putting $189 million towards a trial roll out of CCTV at up to 300 childcare centres.
This trial will start from October and November 2025, and the funding will support small and medium-sized childcare providers (and especially not-for-profits) to install CCTV in their services.
Questions remain about surveillance cameras in childcare services, so the government will work with the Australian Centre for Child Protection to firm up the rules about how CCTV will be used in centres (for example, where cameras can and cannot be installed).
There will also be more ECEC information gathered and given.
The federal Department of Education will conduct an extra 1,600 spot visits to ECEC services.
And parents will be given more information about the performance of their child’s ECEC service, such as when the regulator last visited the centre, and if the centre has breached any national standards.
All in all, it’s good to see the federal, state and territory Education Ministers coming together to make these positive changes, and this isn’t the last time they’ll be meeting to discuss child safety in ECEC.
The Education Ministers are due to meet again in October to talk about the measures, and federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, says this slate of child safety reforms, “Is not the end — it is the next thing we need to do.”
So, stay tuned.
