13 February 2023

OSHC regulatory priorities

To the Chair of OSHC governing body,

The start of a new school year provides an opportunity to reflect on your obligations and plan for continuous improvement as an approved provider of an Out of School Hours Care (OSHC) service under the Education and Care National Law 2010 (National Law).

As you would be aware, the Education Standards Board (Board), is the South Australian Regulatory Authority that regulates the provision of OSHC services under the National Quality Framework (NQF).

As Registrar of the Board, I acknowledge the current challenges in the sector, particularly workforce shortages that can make it difficult to provide consistent high-quality care. I also recognise the important role of the Regulatory Authority to provide guidance, advice and maintain transparent and meaningful engagement with our regulated parties (providers, services, nominated supervisors and educators) to promote our mutual responsibility to provide high quality OSHC services that meet the NQF objectives. 

In this context, and with many OSHC services having recently completed a summer vacation care program, I encourage you to reflect on and review your supervision and medications management policies and procedures because they have direct positive impact on children’s health, safety, and wellbeing.

The Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) is the independent national authority that assists governments in administering the NQF. ACECQA recently released a suite of policy guidance documents that can help OSHC staff with policy reviews.

I recommend the information sheet ‘Six reasonable steps to ensure staff follow policies and procedures’ that provides detailed guidance on how approved providers can support their staff with policy implementation, use and review. 

The Board recently published a regulatory practice statement, which provides an overview of our approach to regulating the provision of education and care services, and released our early childhood regulatory priorities which are derived from current regulatory risks.

The following two priorities have been identified as high risk in OSHC environments:

1. Adequate supervision

Adequate supervision means educators know where children are at all times and enables educators to engage in meaningful interactions with children.

The Guide to the NQF outlines a variety of ways to achieve adequate supervision:

• actively engage with children and diligently monitor their activities
• educators avoid tasks that will distract them from supervising children
• observe and anticipate what may occur next to assist children as difficulties arise and to intervene when there is potential danger to children.

2. Medications management

To ensure that services are adhering to medical conditions policy requirements as outlined in Regulation 90 of the Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011, I would like to draw your attention to the following requirements (not exhaustive):

• Medical management, risk minimisation and communication plans are in place for all children who have specific health needs
• Policy and procedure documents steps that ensure medical management risk minimisation and communication plans are regularly monitored and updated and that information is disseminated and available to staff
• Steps are in place to ensure medication expiry dates are monitored and addressed if found to have passed the expiry date.

ACECQA have information sheets that offer practical strategies to support educators and providers to think about quality practice in these priority areas, linked at the bottom of this correspondence.

Changes to transport regulations

Finally, I would also like to bring to your attention the recent legislative changes to transportation requirements that come into effect on 1 March 2023. Information sheets (listed below) will support you to meet your new obligations as an approved provider.

I hope you have found this information useful, and I encourage you to use our Make a suggestion form to provide feedback on future engagement and guidance from us that you would find beneficial.

You have received this email as the primary contact. Please send this letter to the governing body Chair.

If you have any questions about this letter and the topics covered, please contact us via email at esb.earlychidhoodservices@sa.gov.au.

Yours sincerely

Kerry Leaver

Registrar

Education Standards Board

• Changes to regular transportation of children commencing 1 March 2023
• Guidance for adequate supervision during transportation
• QA2 Active supervision: ensuring safety and promoting learning (see page 3 ‘Considerations for OSHC’
• Dealing with medical conditions in children policy and procedure guidelines