Supervision is fundamental to ensuring children are safe at all times—at the education and care service, during transportation, and on excursions.
Adequate supervision is an essential part of the systems of control that help to prevent incidents from occurring.
The National Law section 165 offence to inadequately supervise children continues to be one of the most commonly breached provisions of the National Law as indicated by
recent years' data and is related to a range of incidents and poor outcomes for children.
Most of the
prosecutions the Regulatory Authority undertakes relate to matters where approved providers failed to ensure children were adequately supervised.
Adequate supervision
Proactive and well-planned supervision by trained staff is critical for children's safety and protection from the harm or hazards that may arise in their play and daily routines.
This requires vigilance, good service design, appropriate rostering decisions and a high level of cooperation and communication between staff.
Supervision is everyone's responsibility—it is an offence under section 165 of the National Law for an approved provider, nominated supervisor or family day care educator to fail to ensure adequate supervision for all children educated and cared for by the service.
To meet their obligations under the National Law, approved providers and nominated supervisors should ensure services have appropriate
policies, procedures and plans for active supervision, and ensure their educators are trained in these
procedures.
Common issues affecting supervision
Regulatory data reveals the following supervision issues:
- educators' lack understanding of active supervision and minimising distractions
- poor coordination and communication between staff
- physical environments and premises that don't facilitate supervision, and equipment and resources that are not safe for children
- inadequate risk assessment and planning for the safe transportation of children and for adequate supervision during excursions
- lack of quality programming which keeps children engaged, particularly for older children in the outside school hours care setting.
Approved providers should consider these issues and put strategies in place to prevent them from happening. They should be mindful of the impacts of educators' duties on their ability to maintain adequate supervision at all times and employ additional staff as necessary.
Videos and resources
'Supervision is the core of early childhood. There is no time of day where you're not supervising. It is the most basic, but important, practice there is in early childhood.'