Emergency and evacuation procedures

A reminder to our Approved Providers that emergency and evacuation procedures should be reviewed regularly and must be rehearsed at each service every three months. 

Ideally emergency drills are rehearsed on days with strong attendance, to ensure as many staff and children as possible experience a rehearsal, to reduce stress or confusion in the case of a genuine emergency and to provide staff the ability to evaluate practice and processes.  

Under the Education and Care Services National Regulations (Regulation 97) the requirement is for services to rehearse a single emergency and evacuation procedure.

While this remains the national position, through our monitoring and visits to services, we have identified that a number of services have individual procedures for several emergency types, both evacuation and invacuation. This can mean that services may need to rehearse several scenarios within a three-month period.

Because of this, our expectation is that services undertake an evacuation and invacuation rehearsal every three months, ensuring that over the course of a twelve-month period, all scenarios which have been identified through a risk assessment, have been rehearsed.

Further detail about the requirements of Regulation 97 are available: National Regulations and ACECQA Guidelines.

Note: Updated in July 2024 to clarify the ESBs expectation.