How the directory is put together and checked

How a provider is added

Our starting point is the provider’s own website. From it we note what the provider offers children: ages, the class times of a normal week, costs and the period they cover, the teaching language, trial classes, and whether a parent has to stay.

A provider’s Google Maps listing can add its address, its point on the map and its opening hours. Some providers have no website at all; their pages are built from the Google listing alone and give nothing beyond the address and any opening hours. For a sports club, its membership of a state sporting association can come from the club list that association publishes.

Each fact is saved together with its web address, the date of reading and a few words quoted from the page. We never use other directories, news stories, booking sites, social media posts or reviews as a source.

The three source labels

Three labels show where a fact was found. The provider’s own website appears as “published by the place”, its Google Maps entry as “Google listing”, and the member list of a sporting association or league as “federation list”.

Every fact on a provider’s page has its label and reading date next to it, which shows who stated it and how recently it was checked.

When a fact is missing

If the pages we read leave a fact out, the provider’s page shows “not published” and the table shows a dash. That tells you about those pages and nothing more.

Nothing is guessed to close a gap. A school year level is not converted into an age, and a cost keeps the period the provider attaches to it. The only calculation we make is the ≈ cost per class: a term or package fee divided by the classes it covers.

Class times versus opening hours

The table splits times into two columns. Class times are the days and hours of a class, an after-school service or a holiday program day, in the provider’s own words; opening hours are when the doors are open, often as the Google listing has them.

A centre can be open while nothing runs for a child of your age. A row that has opening hours and no class times sits below the line, under a heading that explains why.

On the after-school pages the window runs from 3.15pm to 6pm on weekdays, from the end of the school day until tea time. A class qualifies when one of its groups starts inside the window; after-school care qualifies when its hours, late collection included, cover the whole of it.

What we do not assess

Nothing here rates, scores or ranks a provider, a teacher, a coach or a program.
Nobody from the directory visits a provider; we go only by what it publishes.
The standard of teaching, coaching or supervision is not something we judge.
Whether a class still has room is something only the provider can tell you.
We do not check approval by the Education and Care Regulatory Unit, Working with Children Checks, insurance or any other licence.
Costs are shown as published, with their period and reading date, and have not been confirmed with the provider.

Corrections from providers

Run a provider that is listed? If a fact about it is wrong, missing or stale, send the right version through the suggest a change form with a link to the page that shows it.

When your own pages bear out the change, it goes into the next update and is recorded under edits and additions. A provider that stops operating keeps its page with a notice that it has closed, and leaves every table.

To have a provider taken off the directory, pick “Remove a provider” on the suggest a change form and give contact details that prove you run it. We then delete, within a month, its page, every row it has in the tables and its entries in the data files.

Reading dates and updates

No provider goes more than 6 months without its sources being read again. A cost whose period has passed is still shown on the provider’s page next to that period, while the filters and the summary line ignore it.

How the site pays its way

Providers are listed for free, and no payment can alter a row or its place in a table.

A provider’s page may hold one labelled link to Zartrace, a sister service of the directory. Presses on the contact buttons are tallied in bulk only, and no personal data goes with them.

The data, free to reuse

All of the directory is free to download. JSON holds a record for every provider and CSV a row for every program; each file carries the sources, labels and reading dates and names its licence.

Suburbs, distances and the map

An area in this directory is a group of whole suburbs under the names Perth parents use for them, such as Leederville and Mount Hawthorn, Wembley, Floreat and City Beach, or Joondalup and Edgewater. No suburb is split between two areas, Canning Vale stands on its own, and a venue in Byford or in the City of Rockingham is filed under that name.

Distances run in a straight line from the point you choose to whichever venue of the provider is closest, rounded to the nearest half kilometre. The site learns where you are only if you press the location button, and that position stays on your device.