How to check a centre's compliance record on Starting Blocks

If you've started looking at childcare centres recently, you may have noticed something new on the listings at startingblocks.gov.au. Each centre's page now shows a "Regulatory activities" section: when the regulator last visited, whether any conditions are currently placed on the centre, and how many enforcement actions have been issued in the last two years. This is recent. The information has always existed inside government registers, but until November 2025 it wasn't easily visible to families. We think the change is overdue, and we want to walk through what it means.

Why this changed in 2025

2025 was a difficult year for the Australian early childhood sector. Coverage of serious safety failures at a small number of centres prompted a national review of how regulators monitor services, and how much of that monitoring is visible to parents. In September 2025, the federal Minister for Education announced that from November 2025, Starting Blocks would begin publishing details of compliance breaches and enforcement actions. Centres are also required to physically display compliance information at the service.

In NSW specifically, a separate change took effect on 1 December 2025. The NSW Early Learning Commission began operating as the independent regulator for early childhood education and care across the state. It replaced the regulatory function previously held inside the NSW Department of Education, and it reports directly to the Minister for Education and Early Learning. The Commission is now responsible for assessing and rating services, and for enforcing compliance with the National Law and National Regulations across more than 6,000 NSW services.

The combined effect is that families now have more visibility, and the bodies doing the monitoring sit at arm's length from the government departments that fund the sector. Both changes lift the standard of accountability for everyone in the industry, including us.

What you'll see on a centre's Starting Blocks page

The "Regulatory activities" section has three parts. None of them require a login. Anyone can look up any approved childcare service in Australia.

1. Last visited by regulatory authority

This is the date the regulator last attended the service. Visits happen for a range of reasons. The regulator might be doing a quality assessment and rating, supporting a quality improvement process, monitoring compliance, or investigating a complaint or incident. The visit date itself doesn't tell you which of those it was, but a recent visit is a positive signal. It means the regulator is engaged with the service.

2. Conditions

"Conditions" means an additional requirement the regulator has placed on either the provider or the service approval, on top of the standard National Law obligations every centre must meet. A condition might require the centre to take specific action, restrict what the centre can do, or both. Conditions vary in seriousness. Some are imposed because of a safety concern. Others are administrative.

If a centre has no conditions, the page will say so. If conditions are in place, the page lists them.

3. Enforcement actions issued

This is the most important field. Enforcement actions are the formal tools regulators use when a service hasn't complied with the Education and Care Services National Law or the National Regulations. There are six types that get published on Starting Blocks:

• Conditions placed on a service or provider approval (also shown in the section above)
• Compliance notices: formal instructions requiring the service to fix something by a deadline
• Suspensions: where the service or provider approval is suspended, often because earlier compliance issues weren't resolved
• Prohibition notices: where an individual is prohibited from working at a service
• Prosecutions: legal action under the National Law
• Cancellations: where the service or provider approval is cancelled outright

The page shows the count of enforcement actions issued over the last two years. If there are none, it states that plainly. If there are, you can read more about each one. Suspensions in particular show as a "Notice of suspension issued" pop-up on the centre's page.

How to look up a centre

The simplest path is to go to startingblocks.gov.au and use the search bar. You can search by suburb, postcode or centre name. Once you're on the centre's page, scroll down to the "Regulatory activities" section. It sits below the basic details and the National Quality Standard rating.

A few tips when reading the page:

• Look at the rating first. The National Quality Standard rating is the regulator's overall assessment of the centre's quality. Ratings are: Significant Improvement Required, Working Towards NQS, Meeting NQS, Exceeding NQS, and Excellent. "Meeting" is a strong outcome that confirms the centre is doing what's required across all seven quality areas.
• Check the rating date. Ratings can be a few years old. A "Meeting" rating from 2018 still applies until a re-rating, but most parents would want to know if the most recent visit was very recent or several years back.
• Read enforcement actions in context. A single compliance notice from two years ago that has since been resolved tells you something different than three open compliance notices in the past six months. The detail matters more than the count.
• Look at the provider, not just the service. Many large operators run multiple services under one provider approval. If something serious has been issued at the provider level, it can affect every centre under that provider.

Why we think this is good for families

We run four small centres. We have nothing to hide and a lot to gain from a system where compliance information is open to families before they enrol. The honest answer is that transparency benefits families, who can now see a service's compliance record for themselves. That's the right way around.

We also think it shifts the conversation in a healthy direction. Most parents touring centres ask about food, the daily routine, the educators, and the outdoor space. Those questions are still the most important ones, but a 30 second compliance check on Starting Blocks is now part of doing your homework. It's a different kind of question than "do they look like a happy place," and both questions are worth asking.

Where Eikoh sits, factually

We don't want to make this section feel like a sales pitch, so the short version: as of the most recent Starting Blocks data, our four centres have no current conditions on their service approvals and no enforcement actions in the last two years. The most recent regulator visits across the group are on the centres' Starting Blocks pages and we're happy to talk through any of the detail if it's useful. We've operated in northern Sydney since 1991 and our director team has been with us for a long time. That continuity matters for compliance, because it means the people implementing the policies are the people who wrote them and have lived with them through every audit cycle.

We mention this not to claim something extraordinary, because plenty of good centres also have a clean record. We mention it because parents are asking about compliance more often than they used to, and we'd rather give a direct answer than dance around it.

Questions worth asking on a tour

The Starting Blocks data is a starting point. If you want to push deeper at a tour, here are questions we'd suggest:

• "When was your last regulator visit, and what was it for?"
• "Have you ever received a compliance notice or other enforcement action, and how was it resolved?"
• "What's your current National Quality Standard rating, and when is your next assessment due?"
• "Who is the responsible person on shift each day, and how do you cover when they're not in the centre?"
• "How do you handle a notifiable incident? Walk me through the most recent one." (Every centre has had some form of incident, even if minor. The honest answer here is more useful than the polished one.)

A centre that gets defensive at any of these questions is telling you something. A centre that walks you through plainly, including the things they're working on, is also telling you something.

One more thing: the new reporting rules

From 1 September 2025, all approved services across Australia must report any allegation, complaint or incident relating to physical or sexual abuse to the regulatory authority within 24 hours. This is a significant tightening of the reporting framework. It applies whether the allegation is against an educator, a visitor, another child, or someone outside the centre. We support this change. It removes any ambiguity about what gets reported, and it sits alongside the longstanding mandatory reporting obligations and the NSW Reportable Conduct Scheme.

Useful links

• Starting Blocks: search for any approved childcare service in Australia
• Starting Blocks: Child safety and compliance: how the regulator monitors centres and what enforcement actions look like
• Starting Blocks: Conditions on a service or provider approval
• ACECQA: the national authority for the National Quality Framework
• NSW Early Learning Commission: search "NSW Early Learning Commission" for the latest information about the new state regulator

If you'd like to walk through any of this with us, including the regulatory record at the specific centre you're considering, the simplest path is to get in touch and we'll route you to the right director.