Welcome to the NQF e-bulletin, the department’s e-newsletter to support early childhood education and care services to implement the National Quality Framework.
New guidance for 1 January 2014
Qualification requirements for centre-based services
The countdown is on to 1 January 2014 when new qualification requirements under the National Law come into effect for centre-based services with children under school age (primarily long day care and kindergarten). Read more about qualification requirements.
There will be no change to requirements for outside school hours care services with school age children.
Your educators may already meet these requirements
To meet the 2014 qualification requirements, educators (that are required to meet ratio requirements in your service) must either:
- Hold an approved qualification on the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) website, OR
- Meet one of the National Law’s transitional provisions. These provisions allow some people holding other qualifications or working in early childhood before 1 January 2012 to be taken to hold an approved qualification, OR
- Be studying andactively working towards an approved qualification.
Find out if the educators in your service will meet staffing requirements.
Need help meeting the requirements?
A range of support and incentives is available to help services and educators meet these requirements, including:
- Early Childhood Bridging Programfor primary qualified teachers
- TAFE Fee Waiver Programfor Diploma studies
- Certificate III guarantee which provides access to government subsidised training.
Unable to meet the requirements?
There may be situations where, despite the best intentions, your service is unable to meet staffing requirements - for example, in a remote community, finding suitably qualified educators may be difficult or if a teacher leaves your service it may be difficult to find a replacement immediately.
Approved providers can apply to the department for a temporary waiver if they can demonstrate genuine difficulty meeting a regulation. The department will assess each waiver application on a case-by-case basis. You must demonstrate that:
- children’s safety, health and wellbeing is protected if a staffing waiver is granted
- genuine steps have been made or are being made in order to meet the requirements
- a plan is in place to meet the requirements within the timeframes of the waiver.
A temporary waiver is not to be used to avoid compliance. As the department expects that all services will be able to comply with the staffing requirements over time, only temporary waiverswill be issued for staffing requirements. Read waiver application information.
More information
Visit the department’s qualification changes web page which will be updated regularly as we count down to 2014.
For information on the qualification requirements under the National Law, contact ACECQA on 1300 4 ACECQA (1300 422 327) or via .
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