Education Minister Prue Car has announced a review to assess the rise in reportable conduct in NSW daycare centres and how they are handled by the regulator.
Education Minister Prue Car has announced a review to assess the rise in reportable conduct in NSW daycare centres and how they are handled by the regulator.
By Christopher Harris
February 25, 2025 — 2.55pm
A daycare operator that recorded 502 breaches has maintained its quality rating accreditation in what has been labelled a failure of the state’s childcare regulator to be adequately transparent with parents.
Education Minister Prue Car has announced an independent review to examine a rise in safety breaches in NSW daycare centres and how they are handled by the regulator, the Early Childhood and Care Regulatory Authority.
NSW upper house Greens MP Abigail Boyd told a budget estimates hearing on Tuesday that Kids Academy Spring Farm childcare centre in Sydney’s south-west had recorded numerous breaches.
Documents from the Department of Education’s Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority show there had been 502 confirmed breaches of inappropriate discipline in the past four years and more than 2000 cases of the centre failing to protect children from hazards. There were dozens of cases where the centre failed to inform authorities of cases where serious incidents occurred.
“I have looked at the privileged documents, and they are horrifying, and that is just for one service … we’re talking about wrists being pulled and hair being pulled and kids being dragged along floors,” Boyd said.
Boyd’s office later clarified that she was speaking about shocking examples across the NSW childcare system generally.
“That’s just the minor stuff, and yet this is still a service that if a parent looked [at] on site, they would see it as meeting standards.”
A Kids Academy Spring Farm spokesperson said they were committed to upholding the safety, rights and wellbeing of all children. In the event of a safety breach, they said they would proactively contact a child’s family, conduct a full investigation and terminate staff in serious cases.
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“While we are bound by privacy from discussing the details, we have taken a number of measures to ensure the services and quality of care provided at Kids Academy Spring Farm is consistent with our usual high standards and expectations,” the spokesperson said.
According to a government website, the centre qualifies for the childcare subsidy and has a quality rating of “working towards” the national quality standard.
Car said she had commissioned an independent review to be conducted by former deputy NSW ombudsman Chris Wheeler.
“As minister, I need assurance that any increase in breaches is a result of an increase in activity by the regulator and no other factors that are inadvertently driving bad behaviour,” Car said in a statement after the hearing.
Boyd welcomed the review. “I’m very concerned that it’s only being announced today, ahead of this session in budget estimates, on the back of almost four months of what I see as a real reluctance from the department to release information,” she said.
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Boyd noted that in the childcare sector, a high proportion of centres were privately operated. “Many of these centres are backed up by private equity, whose mandate is to get as much profit out of it and to squeeze costs wherever possible.”
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Christopher Harris is an education reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
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