All you need to know about the new national mandate coming into effect for child safety and protection requirements on 27 February 2026, that will significantly impact early childhood education and care (ECEC) services across Australia, including New South Wales (NSW). This is part of broader reforms to strengthen child safety under the National Quality Framework (NQF) agreed by federal, state and territory governments.

Mandatory National Child Safety and Child Protection Training

All people working in early childhood education and care — staff, volunteers, students, management — must complete nationally mandated child safety training.

Training will be available on the Geccko platform, an Australia-wide online learning system for the ECEC sector.

There are two levels of training:
Foundation training from 27 February 2026
Advanced training expected later in 2023.

This training goes beyond basic child protection to include building a child-safe culture, understanding policies and procedures, and clarifying expectations for conduct and reporting.

Expanded Child Protection Training Obligations

The national training requirement expands the existing child protection obligations so that trained child protection knowledge is mandatory for more people across services, including employees and volunteers rather than just nominated supervisors.

National Educator Register (Early Stage Rollout)

A national register of all ECEC workers — capturing identity, training and working-with-children check details for monitoring and safety purposes — is being rolled out, beginning early stages from February 2026.

Why the Change?

These reforms follow a National Child Safety Review and a special meeting of Education Ministers who agreed to strengthen the child safety and protection framework across early learning services. The goals include:

• Improving consistency of safety training across all services;
• Embedding child safety in everyday practice;
• Ensuring adults working with children are equipped to recognise and respond to risks.

NSW Context

These national requirements apply to all Australian jurisdictions, including NSW, under the National Law and National Quality Framework that NSW implements for early childhood education and care.

Additionally, NSW has been progressing its own state-level reforms to bolster childcare safety — including an independent early learning regulator and tougher penalties for breaches — which operate alongside the national reforms.