Childcare enforcement doubled in 2026: what a compliance action looks like

In the most recent quarter reported, regulators took 1,538 compliance actions against Australian early childhood services. In the same quarter a year earlier, they took 735. Over the same period the proportion of approved services rated Meeting the National Quality Standard or above rose to 92 per cent, from 88 per cent, and the share of services operating under a staffing waiver fell to 4.3 per cent from 7.9 per cent.

More services are clearing the bar and more services are being actioned, at once. The structural change underneath those numbers is the one most providers have not adjusted to: a second regulator can now reach them, and it never visits.

Two regulators can act, and only one of them walks through your door

Your state or territory regulatory authority regulates you under the Education and Care Services National Law. It assesses and rates, inspects, issues compliance notices, imposes conditions, suspends approvals and prosecutes. This is the regulator providers know, because it turns up.

The Commonwealth Department of Education regulates you under Family Assistance Law, and its lever is Child Care Subsidy approval. It can attach conditions to that approval, suspend it, or cancel it. It issues notices to providers and services rated Working Towards the National Quality Standard or below, identified in cooperation with state and territory regulators. It does not inspect your playground.

Commonwealth funding is around 70 per cent of a typical service's revenue. On 1 July 2026 the Education Minister put it plainly: Commonwealth funding will now be used as a regulatory mechanism where services repeatedly fail to provide a safe environment. Of the 115 services placed on notice nationally at that point, around 46 had improved enough to retain funding and seven had surrendered their approval rather than continue.

A published notice is itemised, dated, and public

Enforcement arrives as a list, with dates, on a public register.

South Australia's Education Standards Board issued Edge Early Learning South Australia a compliance notice on 4 August 2026 requiring a full inspection of the premises and the removal or rectification of named hazards: a deteriorated stage and cupboard, an unsecured shed roller door, mushrooms accessible to children, excessive cobwebs. Nine days later, on 13 August, the same service received an emergency action notice after a child was fed a known allergen. That second notice was not about the premises at all. It required the provider to write to every family, obtain updated dietary requirement information for every enrolled child, have each one signed by the parent or guardian, and have the responsible Area Manager physically sign off. The Edge Early Learning group entered voluntary administration on 26 August, with centres continuing to operate.

Read those two notices together and the pattern is clear. The first asks you to fix a thing. The second asks you to produce a record, per child, signed, current, and verifiable by someone accountable.

The workforce version of that question is the harder one

A regulator responding to an incident does not ask whether you hold a file. It asks who was working, in which room, on which day, and whether each of them was qualified and cleared to be there at that moment.

That is a different question from the one a folder answers. For every educator, student on placement, volunteer and casual on the floor that day you need:

• A current Working With Children Check, verified against the state portal, with the police history component already inside it rather than tracked separately.
• Foundation child safety training with a completion date, plus any state child protection course that applies. The deadline for existing staff passed on 27 August 2026.
• Qualification evidence sufficient to support the ratio you were running, which matters more now that fewer services are operating under a staffing waiver.
• An entry on the National Early Childhood Worker Register.

Authoritative sources

• Enforcement action register (Department of Education)
• Strengthening safety through Child Care Subsidy (Department of Education)
• What to do if you get a compliance notice (Department of Education)
• Current compliance action (Education Standards Board, South Australia)

Where a workforce bureau fits

Koora is a bureau for Australia's care workforce. The idea is narrow and worth stating precisely: one maintained record of a worker's checks that many organisations can rely on, instead of the same educator being checked from scratch by every service they work for. The worker holds their Career Passport and decides who sees it. We set out what we do and do not mean by the word in why we removed the worker marketplace.

For enforcement, the useful property is currency rather than storage. Working With Children Checks are verified by Koora through the state portal when they are collected and then tracked for expiry, so a lapse surfaces before a regulator finds it, with the ACT the exception because it has no portal to query. The compliance engine tests each person's records against what their role actually requires and names the gaps, on every plan. Where you want a person to review the documents themselves, that happens when a worker shares their passport with your service, or across the records your organisation already holds through the Crew add-on.

One limit worth stating rather than glossing. The childcare worker register is not publicly accessible, so Koora does not screen it. A regulator's decision about an individual educator reaches you through the regulator. The ban registers Koora screens continuously are the aged care, NDIS and Victorian disability worker registers, which is a real capability and not a childcare one.

Koora pre-clears. Sighting the evidence and deciding who works with children stays with you as the approved provider, and no report from us changes that. What changes is how long it takes to answer the question when someone asks it on a Tuesday afternoon. For the mechanics of keeping that current across a workforce that turns over, see worker compliance tracking for providers.