New legislation has been introduced that will provide a National Quality Framework for early childhood education and care services. The Victorian Government drafted the legislation with cooperation from every State and Territory and will be introduced progressively across the country to be operational by January 2012.
The new Bill is designed to ensure a national approach to regulation and assessment of children's services, replacing the existing licensing and quality assurance processes. Long day care, family day care, preschool and outside school hours care services will be assessed under the new system that provides a rating against seven quality areas and then an overall rating.
The draft legislation can be viewed online from the link below.
