Your child's childcare uses an app. Here's how it works.
When your child goes to childcare, the centre usually records their day in an app, including photos, notes, attendance and health details. That app is made by a separate company, and that company stores your child's information on its own systems.
You probably know it as the app that sends you photos and daily updates. Behind the scenes it often does more. Depending on the app, it can handle sign-in and sign-out, incident reports, medical notes, learning stories and invoices.
What does it record about my child?
Most apps hold four kinds of information:
Photos and videos taken by educators during the day.
Notes, such as daily updates and learning stories about what your child did and learned.
Attendance, including the times your child arrived and left.
Health details, such as allergies, medication and records of an injury or illness (some of these must be kept until your child turns 25, see below).
Who makes the app?
Your centre chose the app and pays to use it. A third-party software company built it and runs the computers where the information is stored.
Most childcare providers are small: 78% run a single service. So most centres have no IT staff of their own to configure (let alone build) such software, and therefore they rely on the app company for updates and to keep the information secure.
Who can see my child's information?
This depends on the app and on how your centre has set it up. In general:
Centre staff can see the records they need for their work.
The app company stores the information on its own systems (or a cloud provider's). Its policies say some of its staff can access it for limited reasons, such as keeping the service running, security or legal requests. How much they can see differs between apps, so check the app's privacy policy. The centre stays responsible too, even though the app company holds the data.
You can see what the centre shares with you in the app.
Other people may see some photos, depending on the consent you gave at enrolment. This can include your own family, other families at the centre, or people who see the centre's marketing.
Our suggestion for the consent form:
Yes to sharing photos with your own family.
Ask what "within the service" means before you agree.
No to sharing with other families, educational use (such as training or conferences) and marketing.
How long can my child’s data be kept?
National childcare rules set minimum times for some records. Centres must keep records of an incident, injury, trauma or illness until the child turns 25. Most other records about an enrolled child, including assessments of their learning, must be kept until 3 years after the child's last day (Education and Care Services National Regulations, reg 183(2)(a), (b) and (d); ACECQA, Guide to the NQF). Photos used in learning stories may fall under these rules.
These rules say how long records must be kept at a minimum. Today, no law sets the longest time an app company can keep them. National guidelines ask each centre to decide how long it keeps photos, with no set time limit. We reviewed six childcare platforms, and none of them says it deletes a child's data when the child leaves.
Can I ask for it to be deleted?
You can ask. But no law in Australia currently requires the centre or the app company to say yes. In September 2026, the national privacy regulator told a journalist writing for The Monthly that Australians "do not currently have a right under the Privacy Act to request the deletion of their personal information".
The Privacy Act does say an organisation must take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information once it no longer needs it. The organisation decides when that point comes. Parents have no right under this rule to make it happen.
A 2026 draft law would create a right to deletion, but only for very large online platforms such as big social media services, so it's very unlikely to cover childcare apps. Some companies delete data when a parent asks. That is their choice.
Good to know
You have a general right to see the personal information an organisation holds about you (OAIC).
You can ask for wrong or out-of-date information to be corrected (OAIC).
Ask your centre first. It chose the app, and it's the organisation you deal with.
We believe technology has a real place in education. We want it to be safer for children and their families.
Next step: use our questions to ask about your child's photos and data.
