Families rely on outside school hours care (OSHC) for their children before and after school, but for many there simply isn't enough available—or any at all.
Analysis for the Beyond the Bell project at the University of Sydney has mapped Australia's shortage of after-school care places, finding that one in five students in year four and below (18.9%) attend a school without an on-site after-school service in 2026.
Nationally, the 1,589,203 students in these years of primary school where after-school care is most needed share just 362,598 on-site places. That's a place for only 22.8% of students if they were distributed evenly.
Key facts
- 1 in 5 students go to a school without an on-site service
- Remote schools have just 1 place for every 10 students
- Major cities have places for only 1 in 4 students
- Primary schools outnumber services by 1600
Explore the maps to find your neighbourhood or read the analysis to understand how access is distributed across states and territories, the city-country divide and school sectors.
Explore the data
Select a dot or click the map
Analysis
There is significant disparity between the number of OSHC services and places available around the country with primary schools outnumbering after-school care services by 1613.
While just over 570,000 K–6 students attended OSHC in the June quarter of 2026, many of those don't have the level of access they require.1 The best access is concentrated in major cities where one in four students have access to an on-site place, while outer metropolitan, regional and rural families have significantly less. Taken together, remote schools have just one place for every 10 students.
In the Broken Hill local government area (LGA), for example, 1105 students at eight primary schools have access to only two after-school care services with 125 places between them.
In the Western Sydney LGA of Fairfield, there is an on-site OSHC place for only one in ten primary students, compared to the City of Sydney LGA where places are available for nearly six in ten students.
This illustrates significant access disparities, but is not the whole picture: We still hear from parents at inner-city schools who struggle to access places and the number of sessions they require.
Comparing the states and territories, the Australian Capital Territory has the highest level of access with on-site places for one in three students. New South Wales has the best access of the three populous East coast states. Western Australia lags behind with spaces for 15% of primary students.
But looking at states and territories alone obscures a significant city-country divide.
This chart reflects the additional places available in major cities: 67.8% of primary students go to school in major cities, but enjoy 75.9% of after-school places. Among the capitals, Perth has notably fewer places per student.
The differences among the three school sectors are marked. Catholic schools have more access to OSHC than government and independent schools in both the proportion of schools with on-site OSHC and the proportion of the sector's national enrolments attending a school with an on-site service. Independent primary schools have less on-site OSHC than both Catholic and public schools.
Access by sector
| Sector | Schools | Schools w/ on-site (%) | Students | Students w/ on-site (%) | On-site OSHC access (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Catholic | 1,350 | 74.5% | 295,850 | 85.4% | 25% |
| Government | 5,380 | 59.2% | 1,078,132 | 81.7% | 23.1% |
| Independent | 993 | 57.0% | 215,221 | 72.1% | 18.4% |
The gap between Catholic and public access is narrower in terms of the proportion of students attending a school with an on-site service. This likely reflects a concentration of services in larger public primary schools or, conversely, more on-site services at small Catholic primary schools than at small publics.
While demonstrating significant inequity in the distribution of access to OSHC, this mapping and analysis raises, but cannot answer, important questions about the forms of education and care required by different communities.
Further work is required to understand the character of OSHC demand, particularly at different employment levels and from families using informal care, to identify neighbourhoods where children would most benefit from additional play-based education, and to ensure communities have a voice in their education and care arrangements.
Beyond the Bell
Beyond the Bell is a project of the Sydney Policy Lab and the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney gathering experts to explore how outside school hours care can bridge the gulf between school and work hours while addressing disadvantage and improving children’s mental and physical wellbeing, educational outcomes, social development and safety.
About the data
These maps were produced by enriching data from the national schools and early childhood regulators with spatial and demographic information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They cover 6110 Child Care Subsidy-registered services approved to provide after-school care and 9755 schools with 1,589,203 enrolled students in year four and below. References to 'students' throughout are to this cohort.
Notes
Why just after-school care?
OSHC includes before- and after-school and holiday care. This data focuses on after-school care because the distribution of holiday services and the way families use them is quite different to before- and after-school care (see Beyond the Bell's briefing on holiday care shortages). Only 23 of 6110 OSHC services nationally offer before-school care but not after-school. These were omitted from the analysis.
"On-site" service identification
The measure of proportion of schools with an on-site OSHC service in this data is useful in aggregate, but caution should be exercised when referencing the on-site status of individual schools. Make sure to check the nuance of individual schools' arrangements.
Because regulators do not provide a central, machine-readable mapping of OSHC services to the schools they serve, the Beyond the Bell project has identified the location of services from address data. Schools and services were matched by marking the closest OSHC service within 300 metres of the school as operating on site. This radius was relaxed for nearby services with names including OSHC keywords.
This method facilitates large-scale analysis of the data but comes with caveats at the local level: some schools are quite close together, some use multiple OSHC services, some OSHC services work with multiple schools. Again, check school websites if you're zeroing in on a particular example.
Enrolment counts
Primary student counts throughout the analysis are the sum of enrolments from the year prior to year one to year four inclusive, reflecting the OSHC sector's experience of year groups with meaningful demand. This excludes West Australian and Tasmanian students attending non-compulsory kindergarten at schools two years prior to year one.
Data limitations prevent knowing exact primary enrolments at schools with multiple primary campuses. For multi-campus schools where the campus or campuses attended by primary school students were ambiguous, enrolments were attributed to the head campus as nominated to ACARA. Students may not attend school in the area in which they live.
Place counts
Services are not required to report the type of care for which an approved place is used. Of the 6110 services registered to provided subsidised OSHC, 1188 (19.4%) are also registered to provide another type of care like long day care or preschool, including 291 on-site services that offer another care type.
By assuming all services registered to provide OSHC do provide it, the analysis takes a conservative approach, likely overstating the number of available OSHC places, particularly at services off school grounds included in the 'total OSHC places per student' figures.
Sources
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. "Digital boundary files." Accessed 13 April 2026.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. "Census 2021, General Community Profiles." Accessed 13 April 2026.
- Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority. "National Registers." Accessed 24 September 2026: Approved providers and approved services.
- Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. "Data Access Program." Updated 2025: School Profile 2025, School Location 2025, Enrolments by Grade 2025.
Endnotes
- Department of Education, "Table 1.2: Number of children by state and territory, June quarter 2026," created 18 September 2026.