30 October 2025

From the Chief Executive 

Thank you to all long day care and preschools for your prompt response in providing policies and procedures addressing the use of personal devices to meet the recent regulation changes. A reminder that from 1 January 2026, refinements to the National Quality Standard (NQS) will commence to sharpen the focus on child safety and explicitly reference child safety within Quality Areas 2 and 7. More information can be found here.

While recent media coverage has drawn attention to compliance matters, it’s important to highlight that a large majority of services continue to deliver high quality education and care, ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of children across the state. I thank you for your ongoing professionalism and dedication.

The increase in compliance activity over the last few months reflects the Education Standards Board’s (ESB) expanded capacity for proactive visits, made possible by the State Government’s investment to support our regulatory functions. In accordance with the National Law, the ESB is proactively publishing prescribed information about compliance and statutory action on our website to support greater transparency across the sector and within the broader community.

Finally, World Teacher’s Day is on Friday 31 October 2025 and I’d like to recognise the skill and expertise of our state’s early childhood teachers. Our early childhood professionals play an important part in supporting children’s safety, wellbeing and development in the early years.

Benn Gramola
Chief Executive
Education Standards Board

Early Childhood Education and Care

Key milestone on child safety reforms

Education Ministers have agreed to a comprehensive package of reforms to keep children even safer in early childhood education and care settings. These have been outlined in the Decision Regulation Impact Statement (DRIS).

Starting Blocks update - Expanding transparency to empower family decision making

ACECQA has recently expanded the information published on the government website StartingBlocks.gov.au to include the following details from September 2025:

• The date of the most recent regulatory visit to each service
• Any conditions placed on a service or provider by state or territory regulators
• Provider-level information, including links to other services they operate.

Publication of compliance and statutory action on the ESB website

Under the National Law, regulatory authorities may publish prescribed information about the following enforcement actions

Schools

What ESB regulates in schools 

Within the schools sector, the Education Standards Board (ESB) is responsible for:

• Registration and renewal of all government and non-government schools within South Australia
• Management of the Schools Register
• Registration and renewal of Student Exchange Organisations (SEO) within South Australia

Reminder about personal device use in schools

From 1 September 2025, all Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services were required to implement a policy and procedure aligned with the National Model Code to address the use of personal devices.

Public schools can access the Department for Education’s updated mobile phone policy here.