G8 Education would like to acknowledge that the stories in the media in the past few weeks about the early childhood education and care sector have been difficult and confronting for families, children, teachers and educators across Australia. It highlights the importance of ensuring quality early childhood education and care.
G8 Education is one of Australia’s leading providers of quality early childhood education and care. Each year we care for more than 41,000 children. The safety, well-being, and development of the children in our care is our number one priority and we acknowledge the importance of maintaining public trust.
We take child protection and safeguarding extremely seriously, demonstrated and underpinned by our robust National Child Protection and Safeguarding Framework and Policy, which guides the practice of our 10,000 team members in our 406 centres.
These measures are designed to ensure that our centres are safe environments, where children are protected from harm, and where they receive the highest standard of education and care.
G8 Education is dedicated to transparency and accountability. As an approved provider of early childhood education and care, G8 Education is required to self-report by notifying the regulatory authority about incidents, complaints and changes to information.
We have a strong culture of self-reporting and G8 Education is committed to ensuring that our centres are safe environments, as evidenced in our proactive approach to identify, report and address incidents. An important component of our incident management procedure is identifying and resolving issues that contribute to the incident, including taking strong disciplinary action where required, up to and including termination of employment.
Along with our commitment to safety, our focus on quality has resulted in 93 per cent of our centres currently “Meeting” or “Exceeding” the independently assessed National Quality Standards. This result is 2 per cent above the sector average reflecting our commitment to providing safe, nurturing, and enriching environments for the children in our care.
Quality early childhood education and care providers face many complex challenges, and we are committed to continuous improvement to ensuring the wellbeing of Australian children remains at the heart of everything we do.
As a child safe organisation, in addition to mandatory state-based working with children checks, we have introduced police checks for key centre-based team members. We consider this to be an essential component of our hiring process, and we continuously improve our practices to align with the highest standards of safeguarding.
A key to providing high standards of education and care is retaining team members and providing them with access to professional development and training opportunities.
2300 G8 Education team members engaged in our Study Pathways program during 2024. We partner with high calibre universities and Registered Training Organisations. In addition, G8 Education updated mandatory child safety training for our team during 2024.
We continue to observe a positive and sustained trend in team retention, one of the strongest predictors of consistency in compliance and safety, particularly in critical front-line leadership roles. Retention rates for Centre Managers and Early Childhood Teachers have significantly improved year-on-year and in 2024 was 77 per cent. Additionally, we have been able to attract and hire new team members 26 per cent faster than the prior year, contributing to enhanced stability for families.
At G8 Education, we prioritise strong partnerships with families, ensuring they are active participants in their children’s early learning journey. Through initiatives such as our family feedback program and a dedicated in-house Family Support Team, families have accessible channels to provide feedback, resolve concerns and access tailored support.
In 2020, following the implementation of a new Human Resources Information System the Group conducted a review of award and legislative requirements and self-reported the requirement to undertake wage remediation following the identification of inadvertent non-compliance with some Award requirements for a number of G8 Education’s team members.
To date, payments have been made to 96 per cent of impacted team members. We continue to engage with the Fair Work Ombudsman in a sustained effort to finalise the Employee Payments Remediation Program.
As one of Australia’s largest providers of early childhood education and care, we continuously strive to enhance how we support and protect children in our care, engage with families, and empower our team through ongoing education and development.
G8 Education is dedicated to giving Australian children the best possible start in life through quality early childhood education and care.