Reminder: actual attendance times required from 14 Jan

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) service providers will be required to include actual attendance times in their session reports and statements of entitlement from next week, with the requirement to commence on 14 January 2019.

Child care providers, from 14 January 2019 you will be required to include children’s actual attendance times in families’ statement of entitlement and in session reports. For more information visit https://t.co/hj9WJjysQR

— Australian Government Department of Education (@AusGovEducation) December 20, 2018

In information provided on the Federal Department of Education and Training website, the Department said that, as session reports will need to include children’s actual attendance times, providers will not be able to submit an accurate and complete session report for a child until the child has been collected from their last day of care for the week.

Where providers want to avoid a staff member having to stay back on a Friday evening to submit session reports once the last child has been collected, there are several options, the Department said:

• An ‘unattended mode’ allows session reports entered by the relevant person during business hours to be auto-submitted after hours, once all automated attendance data is received via a kiosk. This was developed in response to feedback from software providers that this was needed to accommodate current business practice. (Note – this option is unavailable where a service enters actual attendance data manually.)

• Providers can submit reports for all children who have been collected by the time the session reports are submitted, and submit the session reports for the remaining children on the following Monday.

• Alternatively, providers can submit all children’s session reports for the week on the following Monday. This may mean the provider receives payment a day later in the week, however, they can still receive payments weekly.

If, in exceptional circumstances, a provider is unable to give accurate and complete information about a child’s drop-off or pick-up time (e.g. because a parent forgot to sign their child in/out), the Department advised that the provider may:

• enter the session start/end time in lieu of that child’s actual attendance time; and,

• correct the report as soon as practical (noting up to 28 days timeframe to vary session report).

Further information about the impending changes can be found on the Department of Education and Training website.