Education Minister Jason Clare plans to create a national database of childcare workers that will hold a sophisticated record of their employment history.

On Wednesday, police urged a further 800 children to get STI tests after four extra childcare centres were revealed as locations where Joshua Dale Brown had worked.

Brown is charged with more than 70 sex offences against eight children between five months and two-years-old at a centre at Point Cook, in Melbourne’s southwest, between April 2022 and January 2023.

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Childcare centre record keeping has been heavily criticised, with detectives forced to execute search warrants to obtain handwritten records, shift rosters and other information, police say.

Investigators have had to interview witnesses to verify details and assessed more than 270 Crime Stoppers reports.

Police have amended the list of dates and locations, including extending Brown’s period of employment at Papilio Early Learning in Essendon by six months and removing the chain’s Hoppers Crossing centre from the list.

He is believed to have worked at 23 childcare centres between January 2017 and May 2025.

Clare appeared on Sunrise on Wednesday, where he spoke about the need for the register.

“This highlights an example of why you need a database or a register so you know where all childcare workers are and where they’re moving from centre to centre,” Clare said.

“That’s one of the things that we need to do.

“(I’ll) introduce legislation next week that will cut off funding to childcare centres that aren’t up to scratch (and) aren’t meeting the sort of safety standards that parents expect and that our kids deserve.”

Clare said the Victorian government and authorities were doing everything they could to track down where Dale worked during his time employed in the childcare sector.

Clare said: “You should be able to press a button and know exactly where he was and when he was working.

“We should have a system that tells us where all workers are and in which centres they’re working at, whether they’re crossing individual borders.”

Funding cuts for childcare centres

Clare turned his attention to funding, given the childcare sector is heavily subsidised by the federal government.

About 1500 centres are either below standard or have not yet been reviewed.

“If this legislation works the way we want it to work, it won’t mean shutting centres down,” Clare said.

“It will be mean lifting standards up. (A) really big weapon that we have to wheel here is money.

“We spend $16 billion of taxpayers’ money on running childcare centres across the country.

“They can’t run without this funding.

“It represents about 70 per cent of the funding to operate a childcare centre.

“So, the threat is unless you get up to that standard, we cut the funding off.

Men in childcare centres

Clare defended hard-working men in childcare centres, saying they probably feel like they have a “target on their back”.

“There’s a lot of men who work in our centres,” he told Sunrise.

“Things are really tough for them.

“I guess what I would say here is that just targeting blokes is not the solution.

“If we go back and have a look at neglect in our centres it’s men, it’s women as well.

“We have Royal Commissions. I conducted a child safety review.

“All the recommendations here are not about targeting the blokes per se.

“It’s about the sort of things we’re talking about this morning.

“Training up our workers to identify bad people in our centres.

“It’s about national register to track people across the country and across the system.

“It’s also about making the penalties real if childcare centres fail, they’re not real at the moment.

“And also, better information to the parents.

“You should be able to walk to the centre today and there’s a sign at the front door to tell you whether that centre up is to scratch.”

Essential service

Clare said childcare remained an essential service.

“It helps you (get) back to work and living and put money on the table,” Clare said.

“It’s good to prepare our kids for school.

“If you ask the teacher at the local school, they can tell the kids that have been to childcare and the ones that haven’t.

“They’re ready to learn.

“Number one, it has to be safe. We’ve got more work to do on that.

“I’ve been pretty blunt. We’ve done some things. More needs to be done. It needs to be done faster.”

Database complaints

It was incredible that major childcare providers did not have a centralised record-keeping system, early education advocate and consultant Lisa Bryant said.

“This is very unusual. If any other childcare centre could not give accurate employment records, it would be a major problem,” she told AAP.

Bryant said there was a high degree of software used in the sector, including to record children’s attendance, communicate with parents and record when educators were on duty, to prove to regulators they had enough educators to meet ratios.

“It would be very rare for anyone to do that manually,” she said.

Melody Glaister, whose daughter attended a childcare centre at the time the accused was working, said it was ridiculous there was no centralised system of records.

“I would have thought that that would be pretty standard for most employers and most childcare centres,” she said.

An Affinity Education spokeswoman said the company had reviewed employment and staffing records since being briefed on the matter on July 1 and had provided information to police.

The Victorian government has pledged to establish a register of early childhood educators in the next two months, which will link into an announced national registration system once it is established.

- with AAP