Industry Insights · Little Scholars School of Early Learning
Industry Insights Little Scholars School of Early Learning Prepared for Search Scope · Drew Heslehurst, Executive Director · August 2026
Patterns rather than news, written from a South East Queensland vantage point, operating campuses across the Gold Coast, Brisbane, the Redlands and Ipswich. Correct as at August 2026 and due for review by August 2027. Attribution: suitable for publication under Jae Fraser or Drew Heslehurst, depending on whether the framing is sector practice or commercial.
What you are seeing What is genuinely working in your industry right now? Child safety reform has raised the floor, and it was needed The reforms rolling through since late 2025 are the most significant change to early childhood regulation since the National Quality Framework was introduced, 24-hour incident reporting, restrictions on personal devices near children, substantially higher penalties, a national worker register, mandatory child safety training for every educator, and a statutory duty making children's safety, rights and interests the paramount consideration in dayto-day operation. It has been expensive and administratively heavy for every provider, including us. It has also worked. Practices that were previously a matter of provider judgement are now baseline, and the gap between the best-run services and the weakest has narrowed. Any provider complaining about the burden should be asked what they were doing before. Wage reform has slowed the bleeding on educator retention The funded wage increases have made a measurable difference to whether educators stay in the sector. This matters more than any other single intervention, because continuity of educator is the mechanism through which early education actually works. It has not solved the problem, and it has lifted the cost base considerably, but it is the first structural response to a workforce issue the sector had been managing rather than fixing. Broader subsidy access has brought families in who were previously locked out Loosening the eligibility rules around subsidised care has changed who can access early education, particularly families with irregular or low work activity. From an enrolment perspective it has widened the addressable market. From a child development perspective it reaches the children who benefit most from early education and were least likely to receive it. Transparency outperforms reassurance, consistently This is the pattern we have watched hold longest. Providers who explain things plainly, how subsidy works, what a rating means, what happens when something goes wrong, do better with families than providers who reassure in general terms. Parents are researching harder than they were three years ago and they can tell the difference between an answer and a soothing noise. The visit still decides it For all the research families do online, the decision is made on site, usually within the first minute. Nothing has displaced this and we do not expect anything to. What has changed is that the visit now happens later in the process, after far more filtering.
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