Compliance spotlight: effective record keeping
Effective record keeping to help you meet the National Law and Regulations.
03 October 2023
Good record keeping practices are essential to maintain ongoing compliance with the National Law and National Regulations and support the delivery of high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) for the children attending your service.
Approved providers, nominated supervisors and family day care (FDC) educators are responsible for compliance with record keeping requirements. Records must be up to date and accurate and include information required under the Education and Care Services National Law.
Services must also ensure that all records are kept in a secure and confidential manner and that they are made available to families and to authorised officers of a regulatory authority on request.
Child related records are to be kept for 3 years after the child’s last day of attendance. These include:
child assessments or evaluations for delivery of the educational program
medication records
children's attendance record
- child enrolment records
- an incident, injury, trauma and illness record (to be kept until child is 25 years of age)
- death of a child whilst being educated and cared for (to be kept until 7 years from child’s death).
Staff related records are to be kept for 3 years from the last day they provided education and care at the service. These include:
staff records
record of volunteers and students
records of the Responsible Person at the service
a record of Responsible Persons placed in day-to-day charge of the education and care service
record of educators working directly with children
record of access to early childhood teachers
- record of the service's compliance with the law.
Print out ACECQA’s handy A4 guide on keeping children’s records (PDF 123 KB) to ensure you’re on top of your record keeping requirements.
ACECQA also recently published a fact sheet for FDC services which clearly outlines record keeping requirements.
One of the most important and comprehensive records your service is required to keep is enrolment records for children. Reviewing and updating your services enrolment forms should be done regularly to ensure your records meet the regulation requirements and also your families' requirements.
Regulation 160 provides details of what information your enrolment record must contain and includes:
child’s full name, date of birth and address
contact details for the child’s parents and for other persons as required
authorisations as detailed in regulation 161
health information as detailed in regulation 162
information about any parenting orders, court orders, or parenting plans provided that relate to the child
information about the language used in the child’s home, the cultural background of the child and their parents and any special considerations for the child for example cultural, religious, additional needs.
New child protection record keeping requirements commence from 1 October 2023
New record keeping requirements will be implemented from 1 October following the NQF Review from recommendations by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It has been recommended that organisations engaged in child-related work retain records relating to child sexual abuse that has, or is alleged to have occurred, for at least 45 years.
View the Updating record keeping requirements to support child protection information sheet developed by ACECQA for further information and resources.
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