What Is The Play-Based Learning Concept All About?

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.

Generally, words like goal, structure, and organisation are commonly used in the corporate world, but now they are a part of everyone’s life. Children’s lives are not an exception, and their childhood and playing too get structured and organised very early in life.

Research shows there are many benefits of play-based learning which contribute to their social, intellectual, cognitive, and emotional development. Yet most classroom environments are often devoid of it. Children psychologists stress on the need to incorporate play into classroom activities.

Reasons For Lack of Play-Based Learning

There are deep-rooted fears, misconceptions, and unwillingness to take additional responsibility that explains the lack of play-based activities in classrooms.

The possibility of children creating a noise and mess while playing in the class.
Need to provide space, materials, time, and a range of activities.
The extra effort involved in generating ideas to kindle children’s curiosity while playing.
Fear of losing control over the classroom as children talk, laugh, and move around.

What Is Play-based Learning?

Play-based learning is learning while at play but is distinct from the broader concept of playing. While a child plays, you do not look at it as a learning activity. However, in the case of play-based activity, learning is fundamental, and play becomes a way of learning. In the process, children develop a variety of developmental, emotional, and social skills playfully. They explore, discover, imagine, play roles, experiment, and solve problems as well.

A well planned play-based programme encourages children to direct the play in their way with the enabling environment that the teacher creates. However, in a teacher-guided play, there is always some level of teacher guidance or involvement to introduce and extend additional learning opportunities for the children.

Benefits of Learning through Play

Play-based learning helps children becoming self-oriented, involved, and confident learners. This helps them a great deal during their adult life. It enables them to navigate various learning areas with ease; building, and exploring seamlessly. They are better equipped to easily interact with the wider world outside the environment of their home and classroom,

Thinking Skills

Play-based activities in childhood lay the foundation for thinking and analytical skills required at various levels during adult life. These skills vary from person to person and include the ability to analyse, discover, create, evaluate, apply knowledge, synthesise, etc.

Interpersonal Skills

While learning through play, students need to interact with their peers. These interactions are valuable as tools to develop social and emotional competencies like adjustment, cooperation, collaboration, empathy, language learning, listening, and improvising.

Intrapersonal skills

All play-based activities make children happy about whatever they are engaged with. It creates confidence, concentration, perseverance, self-esteem, and deeper involvement in learning. The best part about play-based learning is that all this learning happens effortlessly and in a fun way.

Smooths the Transition to School

Early childhood education through play prepares children to adjust to the entry into school with ease and without disruption. A seamless transition to the school environment helps the child to adapt to the new environment and teacher quickly.

A Fresh Look at Play-Based Learning

Intrinsic motivation is a significant benefit of play-based learning for children. It eliminates the need for rewards as an attraction point to do something.
Learning through play focuses on creating the trait of motivation to learn. It works as a backbone for learning in future life.
Research studies have found a connection between play and development of the brain in early childhood. Children pretend and enact various roles through play, which prepares them to meet real-life situations in their adult life. In a way, play-based activities provide a platform to practice various life skills.

If you want to know more about pre-schooling at Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centres, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Just 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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