28 August 2025

From the Chief Executive 

Child safety is our highest priority. With the national focus on the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector, I want to acknowledge services across the state who are dedicated to upholding and strengthening the quality of care and safety for children.

The Education Standards Board (ESB) welcomes the State Government’s recent announcement of $21.8 million dollars in funding over five years and an immediate $900,000 boost to the 2025-26 budget. This funding will allow the ESB to increase assessment and ratings visits and further expand compliance monitoring to raise standards of services across the state.

Measures to better protect young children include the recently announced ban on personal mobile devices in long day care and preschools when changes to the regulation come into effect on 1 September 2025.

This comes in at the same time as other key regulatory changes including services to be free from vaping substances and vaping devices and the notification timeframe for allegations or incidents of physical or sexual abuse reduced from 7 days to 24 hours. This bulletin includes key resources to support services implement requirements inline with the regulation changes.   

Wednesday 3 September 2025 is Early Childhood Educator’s Day, a day to celebrate and recognise the work of educators in early learning services. Thank you for your contribution in supporting children’s wellbeing, learning and development. 

The ESB remains focused on our strategic priorities which includes improving our engagement with the sector by regularly and proactively communicating what the ESB is doing and why. We will continue our proactive compliance and monitoring visits to services, and I encourage you to contact the ESB if you have questions.  

Benn Gramola
Chief Executive
Education Standards Board

In This Edition

Early Childhood Education and Care

Personal mobile device ban and other regulatory changes - Effective 1 September 2025 

All South Australian early childhood education and care services are required to implement a policy and procedure addressing the use of personal devices to meet the changes to Regulation 168 of the Education and Care Services National Regulations 2011.

Understanding Common Compliance Actions 

The Education Standards Board is responsible for the administration of the National Quality Framework (NQF). This includes monitoring and enforcing compliance with the National Law and Regulations for South Australian Early Childhood Education and Care services.

Schools

Navigating ESB's School Complaints Policy

Complaints received by the ESB about the provision of education services by a registered school, or school related are assessed and managed in accordance with the Education and Early Childhood Services (Registration and Standards) Act 2011 (State Act) and the Standards for Registration and Review of Registration of Schools in South Australia (Standards).