Half of ECE services rated “below the threshold for quality” by Education Review Office on at least one metric in the last year

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OPINION/ANALYSIS – October 23, 2025

The Education Review Office considers more than half of 394 early childhood services it has visited in the last year to be “below the threshold for quality” on at least one of its four metrics.

In September 2024, ERO started using a new rating system for its quality assurance reports for ECE.

How did your service do? View our our interactive table and read full details.

The Office of Early Childhood Education’s chief advisor Dr Sarah Alexander says because ERO gives ECE services four weeks’ notice of reviews, it was concerning that so many services were still not measuring up to quality standards.

Moreover, because the Education Review Office no longer has the capacity or resources to review every licensed service it now assesses only a small selection from providers that operate 14 or more services. As a result, we have no way of knowing how many of these services fall below ERO’s threshold for quality.

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