Sector Signal Issue 09: Zero failure-to-report charges. Regulators, funders and insurers acted instead.

• 0 · Charges. Under the post-Royal Commission failure-to-report and failure-to-protect offences, against any school, diocese or school officer, to October.
• $730k · WHS fines. Six fines against school and school-program operators since January 2024. Every one landed on the employer entity, and none on a principal or board member.
• $5.7M+ · Undertakings. Committed by three education departments under WHS enforceable undertakings, nearly eight times the fines. The money buys systems for checking.

• Regulators acted against schools in almost every way except the criminal courts. The missing first prosecution tells you where the exposure went, not that it went away.
• WHS regulators fined about $730,000 but accepted undertakings worth at least $5.7 million. What that money buys is proof that a system for checking exists, and that it runs.
• The fines that landed on schools mostly came from the services on school grounds. Early learning and outside school hours care regulators fined a P&C, a college company and an archdiocese in their own names.
• The civil map moved under every board. The High Court overruled Lepore in February, the ACT and Victoria made vicarious liability retrospective, Queensland's bill reports on 23 October, and insurers are testing what schools knew and when they told them.

The first prosecution hasn't come, and the exposure moved anyway.

After the Royal Commission every jurisdiction wrote offences for institutions that fail to report or fail to protect: sections 316A and 43B in New South Wales, 327 and 49O in Victoria, 229BB and 229BC in Queensland, 66AA in the ACT, 105A in Tasmania, and South Australia's 2022 offences. Through October no school, diocese, Catholic education office, principal or school officer has been charged under any of them, as far as the published record shows. The ACT's own statutory review counted zero charges under its offence between September 2019 and June 2023. Where the new offences have reached court, the reported cases involve parents and a foster carer rather than institutions, and Tasmania answered the 42 state servants its Commission of Inquiry named with discipline and suspension, not charges.

Read the tribunal record alongside that and a pattern appears: the system reliably disciplines the people who abuse, through mandatory mechanisms, and almost never the people who mishandle an allegation about them. The consequence reaches the institution instead, through registration, money and insurance, which is where the next four patterns go. One caveat we would rather you heard from us: these are mostly summary offences and no court list was searched, so the finding is strong at the level of published judgments and moderate at the level of charges.

Worth asking your senior team. If the regulator, our insurer and a plaintiff's lawyer each asked for our record of the last allegation we handled, would they all receive the same file?

Jurisdictions: National

Read: ACT statutory review of s 66AA · Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) s 49O

The fines punished missing checks. The undertakings paid to build them.

Six WHS fines in the window, about $730,000 in all, and the list reads like a term planner: a drowning on a camp, a diabetic student's death on an overseas expedition, a thumb pulled into a bench grinder, a science experiment that set a student alight, a swing shackle worn to 5% of its section, a guillotine that took three fingertips. Every hazard could have been named in advance. The SA Employment Court said what went wrong in Farrell: the Department's system "failed at the centre", because it relied on site leaders "without a system for any checking".

The bigger money went the other way. Three education departments entered enforceable undertakings worth at least $5.7 million, nearly eight times the fines, and in the largest the court charges ended when the undertaking was accepted. Look at what that money bought: third-party audits of the safety system, workshop checklists, WHS measures in principals' and regional directors' performance plans, an assurance audit of every workshop within three years, and a hazardous-materials platform across every asset. An undertaking is a regulator accepting proof that the checking will exist in place of a conviction for its absence.

No principal or board member has been charged as an officer, though they are officers, and industrial manslaughter now carries $20 million and 25 years in New South Wales and $18 million and 21 years in Tasmania. In September SafeWork SA charged the operator of an Adelaide Catholic school over a 2024 hammer-throw training injury; no plea has been entered.

Worth asking your senior team. Does a system for checking actually exist here, and could our board see, without asking anyone, that it ran this term on every excursion medical plan, workshop machine and sports hazard?

Already covered. Every assessment in EthosOne carries an owner, a date and the evidence that closes it, which is the central checking Farrell found missing.

Jurisdictions: VIC · SA · NSW · QLD

Read: Farrell [2025] SAET 109 · Queensland undertaking · SafeWork NSW undertaking · WorkSafe Victoria, guillotine fine · SafeWork SA, hammer-throw charge

The fines that landed on schools came from the service after the bell.

Where school entities actually paid, it was mostly for the care running on their grounds. Queensland fined a state primary school's P&C association $50,000 and cancelled its provider approval, fined an independent college's own company $15,000 after two children left its service unsupervised, and fined a Catholic archdiocese $20,000 after a six-year-old left an OSHC service it ran and boarded a school bus. Western Australia penalised a provider at a Perth primary school $82,000 after a seven-year-old was found a kilometre from the service.

In New South Wales, school-affiliated entries on the enforcement register went from none in January to March 2025 to 59 in the same quarter of 2026, and several of the February emergency notices fell on independent and Catholic school services. Closer to home, the Education Standards Board issued compliance notices to outside school hours care at five South Australian schools between July and September. The regulator does not distinguish between a service the school runs and one it contracts out.

Maximum penalties under the National Law tripled from January, a single breach can now trigger a Commonwealth show-cause on Child Care Subsidy approval, abuse allegations must be reported within 24 hours, and since 1 August the Disability Standards for Education reach OSHC and vacation care.

Worth asking your senior team. Which legal entity holds the provider approval for the care on our site, and do our contracts let us audit it, see its incidents and end it?

Jurisdictions: QLD · WA · NSW · SA · National

Read: Queensland enforcement register · WA Department of Communities · NSW register, Q3 2025-26 · SA Education Standards Board · ACECQA, child safety reforms

The levers that did the damage were funding and fitness, not fines.

Registration regulators acted against at least five schools in the window, every one non-government, and none of the damage came from a penalty. A Canberra Christian school moved from an ACNC show-cause in December 2024, through a Commonwealth notice of intention to revoke its funding approval and an ATO wind-up application for about $8 million, into administration in March 2025; its registration now sits with a new proprietor under quarterly reporting conditions to July 2027. In Victoria the VRQA barred a regional Anglican boarding school from taking new boarders in October 2025, lifting the ban in January but keeping a condition that any boarding child-safety incident be notified within 24 hours.

In August, according to ABC reporting, it told three leaders of a small Melbourne independent school they are unfit to hold a position of authority at any Victorian school, while the school's registration continues under conditions. The Commonwealth's fit-and-proper inquiry into a Sydney independent school opened in March 2024; the last public word, in November 2024, was that the school was refusing to hand over its own review on privilege grounds.

Set all of that beside one quiet number: in 2024-25 the VRQA assessed 601 schools against the child safe standards and found every one fully compliant by the end of review. Compliance on paper and consequence in practice are being decided in different rooms.

Worth asking your senior team. If a regulator asked tomorrow for our most recent internal review, would we hand it over, and has the board decided that before anyone asks?

Jurisdictions: ACT · VIC · NSW

Read: ABC, March 2025 · ABC, November 2025 · ABC, August 2026 · ABC, November 2024 · CCYP Annual Report 2024-25

The High Court, two parliaments and the insurers rewrote the bill.

In November 2024 the High Court confined vicarious liability to true employment in Bird v DP. On 11 February this year it moved the other way on duty: in AA v Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle it overruled Lepore, holding that a non-delegable duty can be breached by a delegate's intentional abuse and that a 1969 diocese stands in no different position from a school authority. Within weeks courts were applying it to schools, including $1.64 million in NV v Tasmania in April.

The ACT (13 November 2025) and Victoria (25 February 2026) have since made vicarious liability for people "akin to employees" retrospective and allowed settlements made after Bird to be reopened, and Queensland's bill reports on 23 October. South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory have only earlier, prospective provisions, so a network operating across states now carries a different historical exposure in each one.

Insurance moved with the law. The insurer many Catholic schools relied on is in run-off, carrying a $547.8 million claims provision and covering only older policies. One Sydney independent school's abuse claims went uninsured after the Full Federal Court found it knew of a 2004 investigator's report before cover began and notified too late. And on 2 July, according to press reports, the NSW Supreme Court paused most current claims against a Catholic religious order that ran schools for generations, pending a creditors' scheme, with about $774 million reported owed and the body that now runs its former schools proposed as the proper defendant.

Worth asking your senior team. Which policy responds to a historical abuse claim against us, and has every circumstance we know of been notified to every insurer that might respond?

Jurisdictions: National · ACT · VIC · QLD

Read: AA [2026] HCA 2 · Victorian Act · CCI Annual Report 2025 · Full Federal Court, [2025] FCAFC 8 · Proper defendant announcement

The clock that matters most now runs in business days.

Queensland brought schools into its Reportable Conduct Scheme on 1 July: notify within 3 business days, report in writing within 30, with the offences attaching to the head of the entity at 100 penalty units, $17,270 from 1 July. Victoria and Tasmania also run on 3 business days, New South Wales on 7 with a 30 business day entity report, and Western Australian non-government schools also tell the Director General within 48 hours. No source yet settles whether a diocesan director or a principal is the "head" for a Catholic systemic school.

Two things are worth deciding now: run your process to the strictest clock you operate under, and name who acts when the head is conflicted. The Fair Work Commission has already found that a leader's failure to report under the Western Australian scheme was a valid reason for dismissal, in a February 2025 decision involving a Western Australian independent school.

Through to the end of November. Queensland's committee reports on its retrospective vicarious liability bill on 23 October. The coronial inquest into the 2021 jumping-castle deaths at a Tasmanian primary school is due to sit again in November, according to ABC reporting, with the Tasmanian Department's practices in scope. Victoria goes to the polls on 28 November, and regulator instruments not made before caretaker risk slipping into 2027, including the new employer duty to verify working with children status. Western Australia's offences for engaging a person under an adverse interstate decision, which we covered in Issue 07, still await proclamation.

December into the new year. The two 10 December dates from Issue 07 stand, automated decision making disclosed in privacy policies and the Children's Online Privacy Code registered. Tasmania has tabled a bill that would require schools to report any reportable conduct not reported since 1 January 2024 within three months of commencement. In Victoria a compliant student device restriction policy becomes a condition of registration from 28 January 2027, with existing schools given until 1 July 2027.

Undated but live. The first return of the South Australian hammer-throw charge, the religious order's creditors' scheme, any outcome of the Commonwealth's fit-and-proper inquiry, and the first trial judgments applying AA to schools, with at least two boarding cases already cleared for trial.

1. If the regulator, our insurer and a plaintiff's lawyer each asked for our record of the last allegation we handled, would they all receive the same file?
2. Does a system for checking actually exist here, and could our board see, without asking anyone, that it ran this term on every excursion medical plan, workshop machine and sports hazard?
3. Which legal entity holds the provider approval for the care on our site, and do our contracts let us audit it, see its incidents and end it?
4. If a regulator asked tomorrow for our most recent internal review, would we hand it over, and has the board decided that before anyone asks?
5. Which policy responds to a historical abuse claim against us, and has every circumstance we know of been notified to every insurer that might respond?
6. Who is the head of our entity for reportable conduct, which clock do we run to, and who acts when that person is conflicted?
7. Have we listed every settlement made since 13 November 2024, and every person with access to children who is not our employee: volunteers, coaches, religious, boarding staff and contractors?

These are the matters the research found between January 2024 and October 2026, grouped by the road the consequence travelled. We do not name schools or individuals: the point is the pattern, not the school. Every line links to the original public record. Each line carries its evidence grade: P means the researchers read the primary record (judgment, regulator release, register, undertaking or legislation); S means it rests on secondary reporting and should be read as reported.

Work health and safety: fines

Work health and safety: enforceable undertakings and the open charge

Early learning and outside school hours care on school sites

Registration, accreditation and funding

Tribunals and employment

Civil liability and insurance

What the research could not see

Some registers were dark or only partly readable: SafeWork SA charges after December 2025, WorkSafe Tasmania after 2024, several child-safety regulators' compliance lists, and any summary-court list. Several regulators also do not publish conditions imposed on named schools. So a school may carry conditions or charges that are not visible here, and the zero-charges finding is strong at the level of published judgments and moderate at the level of charges.

Where the consequence lands is a governance question, not a legal one.

We usually read a fortnight. This time we read the whole period since January 2024, because a fortnight is too short to see where enforcement actually lands.

The offences written after the Royal Commission have not produced a single institutional prosecution that we could find, and it would be easy to read that as leniency. The record says something less comfortable. The consequence for a mishandled allegation still arrives, through the registration authority, the funding body, the civil court and the insurer, each with its own clock and its own appetite for documents. None of them is much interested in whether you had a policy, and all of them want to know what you did, when, and who knew.

So the same ten minute test, pointed somewhere new for the start of term. Pick the last allegation or serious incident your school handled, and try to assemble the record a regulator, an insurer and a court would each ask for. Then ask the harder question: which system should have caught it earlier, and does that system exist outside a policy document? If you can find it, you are in good shape, and if you have to build it, that is the work for this term.

EthosOne commissioned the research behind this issue, and wherever a line rests on press rather than a primary record we have said "reported". We aggregate, we do not break stories, and we will always tell you where a claim is thin. If something here lands differently for your school, just reply. We read every one.

Dave Yeates, Co-founder, EthosOne. Filed from Adelaide. Next dispatch in two weeks.

Sector Signal is published fortnightly by EthosOne. We read the regulators, the parliaments, the departments and the commissions, and we tell independent school leaders what actually changed. Every claim traces to a primary source, and where one rests on reporting we say so.