About VIC OSHC Tracker

An independent tool for understanding OSHC in metropolitan Melbourne

What is this?

VIC OSHC Tracker is a free, independent research tool that maps Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) services across primary schools in metropolitan Melbourne. It is not affiliated with any provider, government body, or advocacy group.

OSHC - before school care, after school care, and vacation care - is used by hundreds of thousands of Victorian families. It is a regulated and largely government-subsidised market, yet reliable, comparable information about providers, quality ratings, fees, and compliance history has historically been difficult to access in one place.

VIC OSHC Tracker aggregates public data from ACECQA, the Victorian Department of Education, government enforcement agencies, and curated editorial research to give parents and researchers a clearer picture of who is running care at their school, how they rate, and what their track record looks like.

What can you look up?

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Schools

Search all 901 primary schools in metro Melbourne. See which OSHC provider operates at each school, the service's NQS quality rating across all 7 quality areas, licensed capacity, fee data, and community review ratings where available.

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Providers

Compare all 262 OSHC providers operating in metro Melbourne. Filter by provider type, NQS quality, and ownership structure. For major commercial operators, view ownership details, private equity backing, profit flows, and compliance/enforcement history.

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NQS Quality Ratings

Every service is assessed against the National Quality Standard across 7 quality areas: Educational Program, Children's Health, Physical Environment, Staffing, Relationships, Collaborative Partnerships, and Governance. Ratings range from Exceeding NQS to Working Towards NQS.

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Fee Data

Where publicly available, before school, after school, and vacation care session fees are shown. Fees are collected from Starting Blocks and school websites. Not all providers publish fees - TheirCare, Leapkids, and MACS services are currently unavailable.

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Provider Intelligence

For nine major commercial providers, curated research covers ownership structure, private equity backing, investor profit flows, and regulatory enforcement history including Fair Work underpayment findings, child safety incidents, and criminal charges.

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Home Dashboard

Aggregate statistics across the whole market: NQS quality by provider type, OSHC coverage by LGA, top providers by service count, and NQS distribution charts. All chart rows are clickable to drill into filtered views.

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Patterns & Themes

Cross-dimensional analysis of provider type and NQS regulatory quality. Three findings with signal strength indicators showing how robust each pattern is and how much weight to place on it.

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Interactive Map

Visualise OSHC coverage and quality geographically. School markers are colour-coded by NQS rating. LGA boundaries are shaded red→green by a weighted quality score derived from all 7 NQS quality areas. Filters update shading in real time. Click any school to open its full service detail.

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Compare Scenarios

Build A vs B comparisons filtered by provider type, specific provider, and/or LGA. Results show quality score, NQS breakdown bar charts, and a colour-coded difference column. Filter selections cascade - choosing a specific provider auto-resolves its type, and choosing a type narrows the provider list. URLs are fully shareable.

How the quality score is calculated

Quality scores are weighted composites of the 7 NQS quality area ratings. They are distinct from the ACECQA overall rating and provide finer discrimination between services. Scores are used throughout the site - on school and provider detail pages, the map, and the Compare tool.

Base formula

Each rated quality area is scored: Exceeding = 2 · Meeting = 1 · Working Towards = 0. Unrated QAs are excluded from both the numerator and denominator - they do not penalise a service for areas that haven't been assessed.

Score = Σ(weight × rating value) ÷ Σ(weight × 2) · expressed as 0–100%. A service rated Exceeding on every QA always scores 100%, regardless of lens. Where QA breakdown is unavailable, the overall rating is used as a fallback: Exceeding = 100%, Meeting = 50%, Working Towards = 0%.

The 7 NQS quality areas

Every OSHC service is assessed across seven quality areas defined by the National Quality Standard. Assessors visit the service and rate each area independently.

QA1	Educational program and practice ACECQA ↗ Whether the program is intentionally planned, based on an approved learning framework, and genuinely responsive to each child's interests, strengths and developmental stage. Covers documentation and educator reflection.
QA2	Children's health and safety ACECQA ↗ Supervision practices, health and hygiene, safe food handling, illness and injury management, emergency procedures, and child protection. The most directly safety-critical quality area.
QA3	Physical environment ACECQA ↗ Design and maintenance of indoor and outdoor spaces - safe, clean, well-resourced, and offering appropriate space and stimulation for the age groups attending.
QA4	Staffing arrangements ACECQA ↗ Educator-to-child ratios, qualifications, rosters, and the Responsible Person in attendance. Also covers professional development and performance management. A cross-cutting area - staffing quality affects every other domain.
QA5	Relationships with children ACECQA ↗ How educators interact with children - warmth, responsiveness, fostering security and belonging, supporting self-regulation and independence. Continuity of familiar staff matters here.
QA6	Collaborative partnerships with families and communities ACECQA ↗ Communication with families, involvement of families in the service, links to community organisations, and inclusion practices for children with additional needs or from diverse backgrounds.
QA7	Governance and leadership ACECQA ↗ Leadership of the service, documented policies and procedures, regulatory compliance, continuous improvement planning, and sound financial management.

Scoring lenses

Different families prioritise different things. The lens system lets you weight the 7 quality areas to reflect what matters most to you. Your chosen lens is saved between visits and applied consistently across all pages. Change it via the bar at the top of every page.

Scroll right to see all columns →

Lens	QA1	QA2	QA3	QA4	QA5	QA6	QA7
Balanced - general overview	1×	1×	1×	1×	1×	1×	1×
Safety First - health, safety, supervision	1×	3×	1×	1.5×	2×	1×	1×
Learning Focus - educational program & environment	3×	1×	2×	1.5×	1×	1×	1×
Community & Trust - family partnerships & governance	1×	1×	1×	1×	1×	3×	2×
Relationships - staff-child bonds & wellbeing	1×	1×	1×	1.5×	3×	1×	1×

QA1 Educational program · QA2 Children's health & safety · QA3 Physical environment · QA4 Staffing arrangements · QA5 Relationships with children · QA6 Collaborative partnerships · QA7 Governance & leadership

Group composite scores

On school and provider detail pages, QAs are also grouped into three composite scores to surface what each part of the service looks like:

Child Safety & Relationships (CSR) - QA2 + QA5 + QA4 at half-weight
Learning & Environment (L&E) - QA1 + QA3 + QA4 at half-weight
Governance & Community (G&C) - QA6 + QA7

QA4 (staffing) contributes half-weight to both CSR and L&E - reflecting that staffing quality is cross-cutting and affects both child safety and educational delivery. Its total contribution is equivalent to one full QA; there is no double-counting. Group scores also respond to the active lens.

Safety flags

Two flag levels are shown on service detail pages where applicable: a danger flag when QA2 (child health & safety) or QA5 (relationships with children) is rated Working Towards - below the baseline standard; and a warning flag when QA4 (staffing) is Meeting or below and QA2 or QA5 is also only Meeting - a compounding risk where staff instability reduces familiar adult presence for children.

LGA shading - absolute scale

LGA colour on the map is determined by the average lens-weighted quality score of all rated OSHC schools within it. The colour scale (red → yellow → green) is normalised to the observed minimum and maximum across the full dataset, and recomputed whenever the lens changes - so colours remain meaningful regardless of which filter is active.

Data snapshot

901Primary schools

683Schools with OSHC

262OSHC providers

1,212OSHC services

31Metro LGAs

9Providers with intelligence

NQS quality data is sourced from the ACECQA national register, updated daily. Fee data is collected periodically and may not reflect current pricing - always confirm fees directly with the provider. Provider intelligence is editorially curated and updated as new information becomes available.

Limitations & caveats

Geographic scope is limited to metropolitan Melbourne (31 LGAs). Regional Victoria is not covered.
Fee data is unavailable for TheirCare (497 services nationally), Leapkids, and MACS/diocesan services - these providers do not publish fees publicly.
School–OSHC matching uses fuzzy name matching (75.8% match rate). A small number of services may be linked to the wrong school or left unmatched.
NQS ratings reflect the most recent regulatory assessment, which may be several years old for services that have not been recently visited.
Provider intelligence covers nine major commercial operators (Camp Australia, OSHClub, TheirCare, TeamKids, Extend, VillageOSHC, Kelly Club, Big Childcare, G8 Education). Coverage depth varies - all nine have ownership and corporate structure; the five largest also include staffing and workforce analysis.
This tool is for research and informational purposes only. It is not a recommendation or endorsement of any provider.

Data Disclaimer

The information presented in VIC OSHC Tracker is compiled from publicly available sources and is provided for general informational purposes only. While reasonable efforts are made to ensure accuracy and currency, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness, reliability, accuracy or suitability of the data.

Data may contain errors, omissions or delays in reporting from source systems and may be updated or amended without notice.

VIC OSHC Tracker does not constitute legal, financial, regulatory or professional advice. Users should independently verify information before relying on it for operational, policy or commercial decision-making.

To the extent permitted by law, VIC OSHC Tracker and its maintainers exclude liability for any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, the information contained within this platform.

Last updated: 4 March 2026

Data sources

For a full breakdown of all data sources, collection methods, and coverage details, see the Data Sources page.

About Parallax Studios

Finding the patterns in public information.

Parallax Studios builds independent, non-commercial tools that use publicly available data to help people see things more clearly. The focus is on information that already exists but is hard to find, compare, or make sense of in one place - regulatory records, government registers, public datasets. VIC OSHC Tracker is one example. Other projects are in development.

No user data is collected. No advertising. No commercial relationships with any provider, government body, or advocacy group. Get in touch at [email protected].