Changes are being made to how out of school hours care (OSHC) service providers are appointed in South Australia, continuing work to improve access and delivery of government school OSHC.

The appointment panel, along with the contract details for third-party OSHC providers, has been reviewed and will change as a result.

Across South Australia, about 29,000 children aged 5 to 12 will access out of school hours care (OSHC) each week, representing 21,400 families. This means just over 1 in every 6 primary school children goes to OSHC each week.

There are about 250 OSHC services operating in South Australian public schools. Of these, there are 151 that are operated by school governing councils, while another 99 are third-party provider operated.

The improvements will strengthen reporting obligations and termination rights for the department, if necessary. The changes also broaden the opportunity for service providers to expand business in South Australia, providing a longer contract to support that.

These changes are fitting given current concerns around safety and wellbeing at OSHC services.

The reforms will have benefits to the supply market, schools and the department, providing opportunities for schools to work together to find an OSHC provider. This will make it possible to establish more OSHC services in more schools, as well as giving providers an opportunity to establish services in close proximity to each other.

All OSHC services must be approved to operate under the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 (South Australia). Services are assessed against the National Quality Standard, which sets a national benchmark for the quality of education and care services.

The new panel process will be enacted over a two-stage approach, with a 5-year panel deed term, and a new Licence and Services Agreement (LSA) term for service providers of 9 years.

This follows last year’s changes to qualification requirements and a new Certificate III in Outside School Hours Care qualification, providing more opportunities for certificate-qualified educators (including school staff) to work in OSHC services.