Daycares to Close at 5pm
From next year, childcare families may have to organise a few early pick-ups, so educators can focus on mandatory child safety training.
BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE
If you’re a working parent, you’ll very much appreciate the way long day care hours wrap around your nine-to-five, but from 2026, you'll probably need to organise a few early pick-ups.
This is because the Australian government is introducing mandatory child safety training.
And with only so many hours in an educator’s day, the government has announced that early childhood education and care services can close from 5pm on a few days per year to make time for this training.
Training will begin in February 2026, and although centres don't have to close early, the government expects that most of them will conduct the training after 5pm on five days throughout the year.
This will be a bit inconvenient if you work nine-to-five, but you'll be happy to know that your centre has to give plenty of notice about upcoming training, and they can’t close earlier than 5pm.
Hopefully you can navigate the early closes without too much trouble, and there’s no doubt that this mandatory safety training is a good thing.
It’s being developed by the experts at the Australian Centre for Child Protection to help educators keep our little ones safe.
Minister for Early Childhood, Dr Jess Walsh, says “The training will enable educators and staff to identify behaviour that should be reported, and to have the confidence to report that behaviour in a timely manner.”
So, although an early pick-up might be tricky on those five days, the training is really important for your child and every early learner.
