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Education Legislation Amendment Bill passed

The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 which passed on 7 October 2009 amended two pieces of legislation that impact on the child care sector:

the Child Care Act 2002 to provide parents, guardians and the wider community with access to information about non-compliant child care services
the Education (Queensland Studies Authority) Act 2002 to enable the Queensland Studies Authority to develop, approve, purchase, revise and accredit kindergarten guidelines.

A copy of the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2009 is located online .

Access to information about non-compliant child care services

Amendments to the Child Care Act 2002 to provide parents, guardians and the wider community with access to information about certain non-compliant child care services have been implemented in two stages.

Stage 1 amendments changed the Child Care Act 2002 to allow the following types of non-compliance to be published on the Department of Education and Training's website, from 1 February 2010:

serious non-compliance - for example, action taken by the chief executive to suspend, urgently suspend, amend, urgently amend, revoke, or refuse to renew a license
repeated non-compliance that exposes a child to risks to safety and wellbeing that are more than minor in nature.

These changes apply to:

licensed centre based child care services (for example, long day care, limited hours care and kindergartens - with the exception of school age care)
all licensed home based services (that is, family day care)
unlicensed services that are regulated under the Child Care Act 2002 (that is, stand alone services which is care of no more than six children, of whom four not yet school age children).

Further details, including the type of information to be published, timeframes for publishing and the right of review process available to child care operators are included in the overview of the non-compliance publication scheme 27k (stage 1 amendments).

Stage 2 amendments introduced on 1 July 2010 require child care servicesc to keep and maintain a compliance history log book (log book) that records information relating to formal notices given to services for failing to meeting legislated standards. This log book allows families and parents to access compliance information about a service that contravenes the Act.

Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guideline

Changes made to the Education (Queensland Studies Authority) Act 2002 have enabled the Queensland Studies Authority (QSA) to develop, approve, approve, purchase, revise and accredit kindergarten guidelines.

The QSA developed the Queensland Kindergarten Learning Guideline in collaboration with a technical advisory committee including experts from within the Department of Education and Training, the tertiary education sector and early childhood education and care representatives.

The kindergarten guideline finalised in September 2010, sets clear expectations for children's learning and age appropriate teaching and assessment practices, with a key focus on enhancing children's language, literacy and numeracy knowledge, and physical and social skills. The guideline also emphasises the importance of play-based learning that is engaging and that builds success for life.

The guideline is intended to provide support to kindergarten program providers to comply with the national Early Years Learning Framework, providing more clarity for Queensland's early childhood educators regarding the expectations of learning in kindergarten programs. The guideline took effect from January 2011.

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This page was last reviewed on 05 May 2011