The Importance of Math Skills For Pre-schoolers

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.

When you send your child to a preschool, you are preparing them for their elementary education. Maths skills learned in preschool lay the foundation of understanding concepts and applications easily in elementary school and beyond. For this reason, early childhood educators should focus on activities and lessons to develop these basic skills.

Basic Math Skills

Early childhood education should be more like play for a child. When you introduce number concepts without the child realising it, math learning in elementary school becomes easy. Educationists feel that a three-year-old child is mentally ready to adapt to these concepts.

There is an advantage in building this foundation of concepts and terminology during early childhood education. Children are well prepared when they need to apply the information in the classroom. Their familiarity with these math basics helps elementary teachers to concentrate on the application of new concepts and ideas.

Learning Numbers via Pictures or Representation

A child’s mind absorbs visual inputs easily and can quickly build a relationship between numbers and items placed before them. Most children develop a clear understanding of this relationship through pictures or representation, and this is an excellent way of introducing mathematics to a child.

The method of representing numbers with toys, pictures, or even the child’s family members or friends becomes a fun and easy way for them to learn. Early childhood educators should focus on this approach, making children count pictures of animals, fruits, etc. The child understands that the number represents the item. In this way, math becomes a part of their life and reduces the possibility of any confusion in later classroom learning.

Developing Number Sense

Number sense is what the numbers mean to the child and indicates their fluidity and flexibility with numbers. This vital basic maths skill encourages children to think dynamically and promotes their confidence with numbers. Preschool teachers must ask children to count numbers forwards and backwards so that they understand the relationship between the numbers in the future as well.

Number sense must be taught before a child reaches kindergarten. The teachers here will review children’s skills in counting forward and backward. If preschool educators lay a foundation in number sense, it can lead to a stronger understanding of this vital skill before the child starts with their elementary education. Early development of number sense is a significant maths skill that plays a vital role in learning mathematical concepts and advanced calculations in later years.

Addition and Subtraction

These are the basic skills that children use while interacting with each other. The give and take of cookies, biscuits, candies while they eat together is a simple way of teaching them addition and subtraction. That makes the introduction of concepts easy and natural.

Learning in this way also lays a more solid foundation for maths skills advancement in future education. It obviates the need to prepare any special maths lessons that may be difficult for them to understand at their age and level of knowledge.

Preschool Learnings Become the Building Blocks for Academics

Young children learn many skills at an amazing speed, and that includes basic maths. They learn these concepts through normal activities in a playful way. Teachers can encourage skills such as number sense, addition & subtraction, and similar simple maths concepts to ease the children’s transition into elementary education. These learnings become the building blocks for their later academic career. Check out our maths preschool activity here.

We at Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centres, 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 reading,
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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