Urgent Survey: Help Us Highlight the Realities Our Members Face Daily

May 8th, 2026 ACA National Updates

Dear Members,

You will no doubt have heard from media reports over the last five days that G-8 Education - one of Australia's largest early learning service providers - plans to suspend 40 services across Australia.

As G8 Managing Director Pejman Okhovat explained in a recent media article, the reason for the closures is a combination of factors, all of which are most likely having an impact on the entire sector.

These factors include rising operational costs - due to global inflation, interest rates and the need to comply with the latest regulatory changes - coupled with ongoing cost-of-living pressures for families, competition from new centres, and declining birth rates.

Together, these challenges have led to a sector-wide decline in occupancy.

ACA NSW President, Lyn Connolly

In this context we are now urgently seeking data from our members, to help get a better understanding of the pressures you are facing at the individual service level.

With your feedback and support, we can advocate on your behalf, to ensure that the State and Federal Governments recognise the serious challenges facing the sector and the daily realities experienced by individual service providers.

Our goal is to influence reform and secure the allocation of future government funding to support the ongoing viability and sustainability of services.

Furthermore, we'd like to see the government implement much stricter regulation of the planning and development of new services, to prevent unnecessary oversupply, which can further aggravate existing problems.

Please complete our urgent survey to help us help you!

To ensure that ACA has the most accurate data around the ongoing challenges that each and every one of our members are facing, we are seeking your immediate feedback on two key areas:

firstly your occupancy levels during the weeks commencing Monday 23 March 2026 and Mon 24 March 2025; and
secondly, your staff tenure plus your sentiments about the current operating climate.

Both of these topics are equally important in shaping our advocacy efforts and informing targeted support strategies to address the sector's needs effectively.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have the capacity to share your occupancy levels for the same week in previous years, this data would assist us greatly too. However this is not mandatory.

Additionally, if you have more than two services and would prefer to complete the survey via a spreadsheet, you can do so here. (File will appear as a download).