Help Your Preschooler Develop Literacy The Right Way

If you have heard that the rules around mobile phones and electronic devices in early childhood settings have changed, you are right. If your child attends a childcare centre in NSW, these changes are already in effect.

Here is a plain-English breakdown of what changed, why it happened, and what it means for your family.

Why Did the Laws Change?

The changes were introduced as a child safety measure. In 2025, Australia’s Education Ministers agreed to amend the Education and Care Services National Law to address concerns about the potential for personal devices to be used to capture, store, or transmit images of children in care without authorisation.

The intent is straightforward: children in early learning settings deserve an environment where their privacy and safety are actively protected.

What Changed Nationally

From 27 February 2026, amendments to the national Education and Care Services National Law took effect across Australia. Under these changes, educators and staff who work directly with children are restricted from using personal electronic devices in care settings.

Before this, from 1 September 2025, all early childhood education and care services nationwide were required to have written policies in place addressing the use of digital devices.

What Changed in NSW

NSW moved ahead of the national timeline. The Education and Care Services (Supply, Authorisation and Use of Devices) Order 2025 took effect on 6 November 2025, applying across NSW’s 6,000 or more early learning services, including long day care centres, preschools, and family day care.

Under this order, educators and staff must use service-issued or service-authorised devices rather than their own personal devices when working directly with children.

What Counts as a Personal Device?

The definition is broad. A personal device is any device owned by an individual (not the approved provider) that is capable of capturing, storing, or transmitting an image. This includes:

Mobile phones
Smartwatches
Cameras and tablets
iPads and laptops
Hard drives, USB drives, and memory cards
Wearables such as camera glasses

Who Does the Ban Apply To?

The restrictions apply to anyone working directly with children at a service, including permanent and casual educators, students on placement, volunteers, contractors, and allied health professionals delivering programs on-site.

Parents, carers, and other visitors are not covered by the ban. In NSW, parents and carers remain free to use their personal devices during drop-off, pick-up, centre visits, and events involving their own children. There are also authorised exceptions for essential purposes, including emergencies and health or disability support needs.

What About Screen Time for Children?

These new laws specifically address staff device use, not children’s screen time. Screen time limits for young children are not mandated within childcare regulation at a national level.

The relevant guidance comes from the federal Department of Health and Aged Care’s 24-Hour Movement Guidelines, which recommend no screen time for children under 2 years, and no more than 1 hour per day for children aged 2 to 5 years. These are health guidelines, not regulatory requirements.

What This Means for Your Family

If your child attends a childcare centre in NSW, their service is already required to operate under these rules. Any educator or staff member working directly with your child should not be using a personal device to take photos or videos. Only service-authorised devices should be used for that purpose.

If you have questions about how your centre handles digital devices or image capture, you are well within your rights to ask. Most services will have a written policy in place that covers exactly this.

At Clovel, the safety and wellbeing of every child in our care is at the heart of everything we do. If you would like to know more about how we support your child across our centres, we would love to have that conversation with you.

Literacy development is a crucial aspect of your child’s development. It’s the basis for performing well academically, managing money and working, developing independence, and socialising with people, throughout their life.

However, before your preschooler learns to read & write, they need to develop solid building blocks for literacy – the ability to understand, speak, listen, watch, and draw. Also, your child needs to develop a good understanding of spoken sounds, letters and the connection between them. For this to happen, they need plenty of experience with:

Letters and words – Their sounds, names and shapes
Objects & pictures – How to use words to describe them while talking
Sounds – How words start, end and rhyme with the same letters; how they can be formed by combining various sounds and, broken up into syllables and so on.

Steps To Take

There are many different ways in which you can help in these areas and boost your preschooler’s early literacy development. This is how you go about it:

Communicate with your child
Read together
Play with sounds and rhymes with your child.

While this may seem like a lot of work, you can incorporate it in a fun way into your daily life at home so that your child learns while having fun. It doesn’t feel like you are teaching, and they don’t feel like they are being compelled to learn something.

All language experiences that preschoolers form have strong brain connections. And as they grow, they use these connections for understanding, thinking and language. Without activities such as reading, singing and talking, the brain cannot develop these vital connections. There are various things that you need to focus on while helping your preschooler develop literacy the right way.

Communication

Communicating all the time with your child helps to develop their ability to listen, speak, as well as understand as they get older. For example, you may notice your children responds to baby talk and smiles when they are very young. They might also try to imitate your facial expressions and sounds. Some things you can do include:

Make every effort to repeat the sounds and words your child says. This encourages two-way conversation and helps in building language skills. Use baby talk when you can and speak slowly, and modulate your voice, while emphasising and repeating words. This will allow your baby to understand words and how to put language together.

Other Ways To Improve a Child’s Learning Ability

Story-telling and singing songs to them is another way to boost this learning.
Imitate their language and words while teaching them the correct way to form them.
Show them books that will fuel their imagination and keep them interested in getting to know more.
Help them learn words and syllables and make a consistent effort to help them increase their vocabulary. Move one step higher at a steady pace so that it improves their problem-solving skills and thinking ability.
Always encourage them to share their experiences from the hours they spend at preschool.
Focus on rhyming as it’s a great way to teach preschoolers the connection between words and sounds.

There are numerous ways to keep children interested in learning more with every passing day. When you make a consistent effort, learning will slowly become a habit with your child. They will develop a thirst to know more about the world around them and will make more significant efforts to read new things and explore new concepts as they grow up.

We at Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centre, provide a very nurturing environment for children to learn and grow. For any information about our services, give us a call at 02 9199 0294 or fill in this contact us form

Thanks for watching,
Clovel Childcare
1300 863 986

Lyn Connolly

Founder and Company Director

Lyn Connolly is the Founder and Company Director of Clovel Childcare & Early Learning Centres, a family‑owned group of eight centres across Western Sydney established from her first service at Merrylands. Active in early childhood education since 1977, she also serves as President of the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW, representing providers in state and federal consultations, media, and public hearings.

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