Page 4275 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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to this agreement and it shared its vision that by 2020 all children will have the best start in life to create a better future for themselves and for the nation.
The key components of the national quality agenda—specifically legislation reform, national quality framework and the assessment and rating process—will work simultaneously to allow the benefits of reforms to be realised. Education and care services in the ACT will experience an integrated and unified national system which drives continuous quality improvement in education and care services at the same time as reducing regulatory burden.
In practice, for ACT families, this means a greater level of transparency in the information they can access about education and care services. In turn, this will allow them to make informed decisions about which setting will best suit their family needs.
A critical part of enabling the passage of education and care services national law in the ACT is an amendment to the Children and Young People Act 2008. For the majority of the ACT’s childcare services, the Education and Care Services National Law (ACT) Bill 2011 will apply, providing a national regulatory framework to licence, assess and support the ACT’s long day care, independent preschools, family day care and out-of-hours school-age care services.
The education and care services national law will also incorporate ACT government preschools under this new framework. This will provide for a unified education and care sector working together to deliver high quality children services to Canberra’s children and families.
The Children and Young People Act 2008, particularly chapter 20, childcare services, currently provides for the licensing and monitoring of childcare services in the ACT. The Children and Young People (Education and Care Services National Law) Consequential Amendment Bill 2011 amends the Children and Young People Act 2008 to exclude those services which will be provided for under the Children and Care Services National Law (ACT) Bill 2011.
The amendment is to section 731 of the Children and Young People Act where it provides a list of circumstances whereby the chapter does not apply. The amendment is to include in this list services that will be regulated under the education and care services national law.
The Education and Care Services National Law (ACT) Bill 2011 sets out those services which will not be included in the framework and that at this stage are considered out of scope. For the ACT, this particularly translates to 17 playschools, two services that provide primary occasional care and one budget-based funded service.
Chapter 20 of the Children and Young People Act 2008 will continue to apply to services in the ACT which are considered out of scope of the Education and Care Services National Law (ACT) Bill 2011.
All of the services in the ACT which are currently out of scope have been informed that they will not be assessed under the Education and Care Services National Law
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