Child Care Centre NQS Quality Rating

Is it a good child care centre? All parents will ask the same question when they choose a child care centre for their child. They normally try to source recommendations from their friends or social media like Facebook, or read reviews from Google etc. Many of parents do not know that there is an official quality rating for each child care centre operating under the National Quality Framework (NQF). The rating is National Quality Standard (NQS) rating.

If you already know what NQS is about and want to check NQS rating of child centres you can start here. If you want to find a child care centre in a specific suburb you can go to the search section directly.

The National Quality Framework (NQF)

The National Quality Framework (NQF) introduced a new quality standard in 2012 to improve education and care across long day care, family day care, preschool/kindergarten, and outside school hours care services. The NQF is jointly governed by the Australian Government and all state and territory governments as a means of driving continuous improvement, realising the efficiency benefits and cost effectiveness of a unified national system with shared accountability. The NQF includes:

• National Law and National Regulations
• National Quality Standard
• assessment and quality rating process
• national learning frameworks.

The National Quality Framework (NQF) Snapshots provide an overview of the Australian children's education and care sector, including the progress and results of quality assessment and rating against the National Quality Standard (NQS).

National Quality Standard (NQS)

The National Quality Standard (NQS) sets a high national benchmark for early childhood education and care and outside school hours care services in Australia. The NQS includes 7 quality areas that are important outcomes for children:

• Quality Area 1 – Educational program and practice: Educational program and practice of educators are child-centred, stimulating and maximise opportunities for enhancing and extending each child's learning and development.
• Quality Area 2 – Children's health and safety: Children have the right to experience quality education and care in an environment that safeguards and promotes their health, safety and wellbeing.
• Quality Area 3 – Physical environment: Physical environment is safe, suitable and provides a rich and diverse range of experiences that promote children's learning and development.
• Quality Area 4 – Staffing arrangements: Qualified and experienced educators, who develop warm, respectful relationships with children, create predictable environments and encourage children’s active engagement in the learning program.
• Quality Area 5 – Relationships with children: Relationships with children are responsive, respectful and promote children's sense of security and belonging.
• Quality Area 6 – Collaborative partnerships with families and communities: Collaborative relationships with families are fundamental to achieving quality outcomes for children, and community partnerships based on active communication, consultation and collaboration are essential.
• Quality Area 7 – Governance and leadership: Effective leadership and governance of the service contributes to quality environments for children’s learning and development. Effective leaders establish shared values for the service and set clear direction for the service's continuous improvement

Services are assessed and rated by their regulatory authority against the NQS, and given a rating for each of the 7 quality areas and an overall rating based on these results.

NQS Quality Rating

Authorised officers from state and territory regulatory authorities assess and rate services using the seven quality areas, 15 standards and 40 elements that make up the NQS. Services are given a rating for each of the seven quality areas and are then given one of the following five overall ratings:

• Excellent (on application to ACECQA for eligible services)
• Exceeding NQS
• Meeting NQS
• Working Towards NQS
• Significant Improvement Required

The table below shows how the child care services are assessed against the 7 quality areas of the National Quality Standard.

The chart below shows what the five overall ratings mean:

Centres Operating Under The NQF

There are 17,651 children's education and care services approved to operate under the NQF (Data as at 1 April 2024). Approved education and care services include long day care, outside school hours care and family day care services, as well as most preschools and kindergartens. Some key highlights are listed below.