Following on from last week, we should ask ourselves why Australia’s mandatory child protection training ‘Gecko’ won’t work. Introduced my the Australian federal government in February 2026, it was made mandatory and had to be completed by late August 2026. However, I’m willing to bet that it won’t change the rate of children being exploited in childcare. Here’s why…
We know that ‘Since 2020, there has been over 1,856 cases of alleged child sexual abuse in childcare centres across Australia’ the statistic is thanks to a 2025 ABC article, linked bellow. That statistic happens for two reasons, because child to staff ratios are inadequate and something is always going on. Gecko training was about looking at the signs of abuse in children, how abuse happens in childcare and things we need to watch out for at work. With some educators, especially those who have experienced child abuse first hand finding the content partially distressing. The thing is that child protection training was already mandatory across the sector, all we’ve done is standardised it.
Standardising doesn’t always fix the problem. Yes it’s useful when selling a product to a consumer in making sure both get a fair go, but children aren’t consumable products and equal and equatable are not the same thing. Gecko won’t fix child safety issues in childcare because it’s not the tool provider’s need to ensure staff have the best interests of the children at hart. The issue isn’t a lack of training, it’s a lack of professionalism, an appalling difficult to navigate system and an inability to share information. Gecko was designed to make parents feel safer sending their child to a long hours daycare services, not assist educators in their efforts to keep children safe.
What we need to protect our kids is a national working with children check or blue card system. In the overwhelming majority of cases, offenders will get sniffed out in one state, move to another and continue as normal. Logically this practice needs to be prevented to keep our children safe right, banned in one jurisdiction, banned in all. Since the blue card system is a responsibility of the state governments and there is no sharing of information or way to cross check, it gives offenders up to eight chances to start over elsewhere. The other thing we need is better systems in place to give educators time to sniff out any rotten eggs, co-workers, parents or otherwise. This means giving educators more time with the children, less off the floor work, providing better ratios that better meet the needs of children and supporting children with additional needs appropriately.
Like most of these things, you don’t have to read the information, you just have to pass the quiz. I guarantee you that every educator in Australia can pass that quiz without spending hours studying. That should tell you everything you need to know about how seriously the sector has taken chid safety in the past. My point is that educators need support, not more mandated unpaid work you must do to remain employed.
Last but not least, activity of the week.
Previously I’ve suggested that you assist children in building fine motor skills using the good old team building exercise, make the tallest tower possible out of spaghetti, marshmallows and sticky tape. This is still a great idea for teaching fine motor, critical thinking and logic skills however it creates foo waste and isn’t particularly reusable, so here’s an alternative.
You will need,
Wooden skewers
Tongue depressors
Pool noodles
Cups
Cut the pool noodles up using a pallet knife, the pool noodle pieces should vary in size but not so small that your child could choke. Using your pallet knife, cut a point into your tongue depressors and place into a cup. Place the skewers into another cup and show your child how to push the skewers into the pool noodles to build their towers.