South Australia leading child safety agenda at Education Ministers Meeting

Education Ministers from across the country have agreed to a raft of early learning safety measures at today’s Education Ministers Meeting in Queensland – endorsing South Australian Education Minister Blair Boyer’s proposed changes to the National Law.

Minister Boyer sought his state and territory colleagues’ support on an additional amendment to first tranche National Law changes to ‘stop the clock’ – allowing the limitation period on regulator action to only commence once any criminal or other investigations are completed.

His proposal for further improvements to transparency for families were also endorsed. They included:

• A requirement of providers to inform parents of serious compliance action taken by the regulator
• The introduction of an offence of providing false or misleading information to parents
• Giving regulatory authorities the ability to suspend or revoke National Quality Standard (NQS) ratings following a serious incident

These will now form part of the second round of National Law changes being developed next year.

The Federal Government has also followed the strong action the Education Standards Board has taken on Edge Early Learning Centres in South Australia and has imposed national conditions on the provider’s approval, preventing them from establishing or acquiring existing services for 12-months.

The extra safety measures follow South Australia’s recently announced ban on the use of personal devices in all centre-based early years services across South Australia. Developed in collaboration with the Victorian Government, this policy meant both states were the first in the nation to introduce the ban ahead of proposed national laws.

These initiatives further support South Australia’s landmark $1.9 billion early childhood reform agenda, the most significant investment in early childhood in the state’s history.

Quotes

Attributable to Blair Boyer

The safety and wellbeing of our children is paramount, and we are working quickly to strengthen the safety requirements for long day care services and preschools.

The Malinauskas Labor government has already provided more than $28m in additional resources to allow our independent regulator, the Education Standards Board, to increase frequency of assessment and ratings of ECEC services as well as boosting compliance visits to services.

But we don’t stop there – there is more to do.

I want South Australian families to feel confident that we are doing everything we can to ensure a safe childcare sector.

Transparency is incredibly important to me, which is why parents need to know if there are issues when they arise and harsher penalties for centres when there is a serious incident.

The majority of childcare centres and their staff absolutely do the right thing, but I am putting on notice any provider that thinks they can get away with poor practice.

I am proud to be leading the agenda on child safety across the nation with these important changes making a difference across every state and territory.