What is Play Based Learning & Why is it So Important?

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.

Parents often dismiss play time for children as a sort of break from learning. Perhaps this is because we associate our own breaks from our jobs or responsibilities as our “play time”—we head to the beach, enjoy a round of golf, or go off on a hike for a little “me” time.

But, for children learning and play are inextricably intertwined. Play is an important part of learning—it is the vehicle by which children learn to make sense of their environment and their role in it.

Famed Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung once said:

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.”

It is important to understand that it is through play your child will develop physical strengths, emotional maturity, and lay the groundwork for academic success in the future.

What is Play Based Learning

Play based learning is a teaching method for young learners that involves child-led play. The students determine the course of the teaching with teacher support and the goal is open ended.

Play based learning allows instructors to teach based on a child’s own interests. For example, if a student is playing in the imaginative play area of the classroom, the teacher can guide the student through role playing common scenarios. (If I am the grocer, how would I ring up your groceries? I’m sorry, the store is out of milk…what can we do to solve this problem?)

Similarly, if a student is playing with a set of blocks the teacher can guide them through math awareness (How many blocks are in this pile? What if I take two blocks away…how many are left?), science awareness (What causes the block tower to fall?), and problem solving (How can we make the base more stable so we can build a taller tower?).

Play provides children first-hand experience in a variety of tasks and situations, and helps them develop emotionally, socially, and academically.

Advantages of Play Based Learning

Improved Communication

Play based learning helps children learn to communicate better by watching interactions with their peers. Interacting with other children helps young learners perfect their communication by improving their speech and expanding their vocabularies.

Again, teachers play a vital role in this area of development. For example, when a student asks a question using an incomplete sentence, the teacher may repeat the sentence using proper grammar, then answer the question. This method offers subtle correction without drawing attention to the fact the student used improper grammar.

Improved Social Skills

Preschool offers a safe environment in which children can expand their imaginations and learn about the real world around them. They can practice problem solving and learn to draw boundaries about what is good and bad, right and wrong, safe and dangerous.

Through independent play children learn how to enjoy their own company. When engaging in associative play, children learn important concepts like sharing, taking turns, and settling disagreements appropriately.

Creativity Boost

Play based learning allows children to develop some control over their environment using their imaginations. Through imaginative play, children can safely explore a variety of scenarios and control their experience by making independent decisions and choices.

Play allows children to develop a deeper understanding of who they are as an individual and how they want the rest of the world to see them. Creativity and social development thrive in a play-based learning environment.

Critical Thinking

Parents are often surprised to learn that play provides regular opportunities for children to practice their problem-solving skills. Learning to take a big problem and break it down into smaller parts is something teachers will model for students (The block tower keeps falling over? What happens if you build it on tile rather than carpet? What happens if you use blocks of similar size for the tower base?)

Comparing similarities and differences and learning to sort are a few critical thinking skills that students hone during play-based learning.

Motor Skills

Preschool is the perfect place for children to develop both fine (small muscle) and gross (large muscle) motor skills—and play is a natural place for development to occur. (If you missed our blog about fine motor skill development, you may read it by clicking here.)

When playing with blocks, completing puzzles, drawing, painting, or sliding pasta onto a string, students are improving their fine motor skills.

Running, jumping, climbing, dancing, and skipping all work the large muscles of the torso and extremities, improving gross motor skills.

If you are a regular follower of our blog, you know how much we love this quote from the beloved Fred Rogers:

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.

The importance of play in the learning of a child cannot be overstated.

It is important.

It is vital.

And it sets the foundation on which all future learning will take place.

Here’s to adopting a new perspective on the importance of play!

For any more information, call Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centre, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. For any information about our Educational Programs, give us a call at 02 9199 0294 or fill in this contact us form.

Thanks for reading,
Clovel Childcare

1300 863 986

Additional References:

Atlanta Speech School

Early Years Careers article

Encourage Play article

PBS article

The Little Gym article

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.

Blog & Videos