About The Sector

The Sector

Overview

The Sector is an Australian online news service for the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector, published by Sector Publishing at thesector.com.au. Founded in 2018 by Jason Roberts, the former chief executive of G8 Education, it provides the early learning industry — long day care, kindergarten and preschool, outside school hours care and family day care — with a dedicated daily news source of its own. Its coverage spans Commonwealth and state policy, Child Care Subsidy settings and data, regulation and compliance under the National Quality Framework, workforce and industrial issues, pedagogy and practice, and the corporate activity of the providers who operate Australia's childcare services. Editor Fiona Alston, who brings more than three decades of experience in early childhood settings, bylines much of its analytical coverage. Around the news core, Sector Publishing has built a jobs board, a learning library, commissioned research reports and a growing events program under the Sector Connect+ banner, including forums on workforce, wellbeing, compliance and risk. The publication describes itself as Australia's largest ECEC publishing platform; that is its own billing, and no independently audited audience figure for it is published.

History

The Sector was founded in 2018 by Jason Roberts. Roberts had been a leading figure in the sector he set out to cover: with a background in finance and executive leadership across London, Singapore and Australia, he became chief executive of G8 Education, one of the country's largest childcare providers, in 2013. Sector Publishing's own account says that in founding The Sector he set out to create a trusted platform delivering timely and accurate news, giving the sector a consistent voice it could rely on every day. The service built its audience through daily reporting of the material that governs providers' operations — subsidy rules, regulatory decisions and award changes — and through annual fixtures such as its year-in-review selection of the sector's biggest stories, published each December. In August 2020 it launched two audience utilities, a dedicated ECEC Jobs Board and a Learning Library for professional learning, describing both as resources for the whole sector rather than only its own readers. In September 2021 it moved into commissioned research with the Child Care Management Systems in Australia guide, a fifty-page report it billed as the first of its kind for the sector, as the foundation of an ongoing report-writing stream. From 2020 — when its ECEC Innovation Forum was converted into a free virtual event during the pandemic — the business added face-to-face and online events, and by 2025–26 its Connect+ forum series had become a regular part of its output alongside the daily news service.

Content and Coverage

The Sector publishes news and analysis across the breadth of early childhood education and care. Policy coverage follows the decisions that shape the sector's economics: Child Care Subsidy rules and quarterly data releases, preschool funding agreements between the Commonwealth and the states, wage measures such as the ECEC Worker Retention Payment, and award rulings including the Children's Services Award changes addressing gender-based undervaluation. Regulatory coverage tracks the National Quality Framework, state regulatory authorities and enforcement action, such as the Victorian regulator's first criminal charges under its new framework. Practice and quality content addresses the professional work of educators — learning trajectories, child-safe cultures, safeguarding training — while provider and corporate coverage follows openings, sales and consolidation among operators, from G8 Education's portfolio sales to Camp Australia's acquisition of Jabiru's Queensland OSHC services. Its reporting is heavily data-led: detailed explainers unpack the Commonwealth's quarterly CCS data reports and the National Workforce Census. Contributors from across the sector write opinion and perspective pieces, and staff writers including editor Fiona Alston file daily. In October 2026 the site was publishing multiple stories a day, including regulatory news, data analysis dated 14 October 2026 and coverage of sector pay and policy deadlines.

Audience and Reach

The Sector's audience is the professional community of Australian early childhood education and care: approved providers and their executives, centre directors and managers, educational leaders, teachers and educators, and the policymakers, lawyers, brokers, suppliers and consultants who serve the industry. The sector it addresses is a large one — the Commonwealth data its reporting analyses records close to one million families and more than 15,000 approved services using subsidised care. Audience measures for The Sector itself are the publisher's own claims and are attributed as such. When it launched its Jobs Board and Learning Library in August 2020, Roberts said the resources would help employers and learning producers reach "our 75,000 monthly visitors". The company now bills The Sector as "Australia's largest early childhood education and care publishing platform" and "the early learning sector's most trusted news voice" in its event announcements; these are the publisher's own descriptions, not audited findings, and no independently verified circulation or traffic figure is published for the title. Its stories are nonetheless cited as a sector source in academic and policy documents, including submissions drawing on its reporting of workforce capacity and award changes.

Digital Presence

The Sector is a digital-only publication. Its website, thesector.com.au, is updated daily with news, analysis and opinion organised by topic — quality, practice, workforce, compliance, policy and provider news — and readers can subscribe to email newsletters, including a dedicated Jobs Board newsletter, through the site. The platform extends well beyond articles: the Jobs Board carries employment listings for employers across ECEC, the Learning Library aggregates professional learning offerings, and commissioned reports such as the Child Care Management Systems guide are sold and distributed through the site. Events are promoted and reported online, and recordings and coverage of its forums extend their reach beyond the room. The Sector maintains social media channels through which its stories and events are distributed to the ECEC community, and its archive of daily reporting reaches back to its early years, including the year-in-review collections it has published since 2019. In 2026 the site carried a full calendar of current material: forum announcements, data explainers and news stories dated through October 2026.

Ownership and Organisation

The Sector is owned and published by Sector Publishing, the company established by its founder, Jason Roberts, who remains founder and chief executive of the business and a regular moderator and commentator in its pages and at its events. Roberts writes analysis for the title as well as leading the company. Anna Boshell is general manager, driving operations, strategy, partnerships and engagement; she also serves as a contact point for commercial services such as Jobs Board listings. Fiona Alston is editor, shaping editorial direction and writing a large share of its news and analysis; she has more than thirty years' experience across community and private ECEC settings and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. The Connect+ events series — including the Owners and Landlords Forum held in Brisbane in March 2025, the ECEC Workforce and Wellbeing Forum in Melbourne in 2025 and again in 2026, and the ECEC Compliance and Risk Forum in Sydney in 2026 — is run by the same small team with industry partners and sponsors. Sector Publishing does not publish a street address for its office; it operates nationally from Sydney, and this profile lists it there per the project inventory, with the location to be confirmed against the publisher's own records at publish time.

Contact and Availability

The Sector is published online at thesector.com.au and is free to read, with newsletter subscriptions available through the website. Readers, contributors and advertisers can reach the publishing team through the contact and staff pages on the site; commercial enquiries about the Jobs Board and Learning Library are directed to the general manager, Anna Boshell, whose published mobile number appears in the site's announcements (in body text only here: 0403 526 246). Details, programs and registration for the Sector Connect+ forums — including the Compliance and Risk Forum and the Workforce and Wellbeing Forum — are published on the website's events pages, and its research reports, including the Child Care Management Systems guide, are available through the site.