Founded by an Educator, for
Approved Providers
O U R S T O R Y
W H E R E I T A L L S T A R T E D
He left the biggest job in the sector to buy a run-down centre at Yatala.
Jae Fraser ran operations for Australia’s largest publicly listed childcare provider, across Australia and Singapore. He could see how decisions that start out being about children get reshaped on the way down.
So he left, and started again with one service.
Once you have watched it from the inside, you cannot unsee it.
The timeline
The first campus
Little Scholars opens at Yatala. The Scholars Group is founded the same year, and the first management client signs.
EY Entrepreneur of the Year
Northern Region. The judges cited advocacy for people and culture.
Telstra Business Awards
Queensland finalist, from more than 21,000 applications nationally.
Karalee opens
The seventeenth campus, and the first in Ipswich.
Thirty services managed
For approved providers from Coolum to Port Macquarie, across two states and two regulatory authorities.
How every decision gets made
Three questions, in this order.
What is best for the child
The first test, and it is not rhetorical. If the answer is no, the rest does not get discussed.
What is best in field
The second test. Not what is customary in the sector, what is actually best practice.
What is nobody doing that we could be doing
The third. It is why we keep building things the sector has not asked for.
Why the management arm exists
We did not set out to run other people’s services.
The first provider who asked was someone in trouble. We said yes, it worked, and other providers started asking.
It grew because the alternative for a single-service owner was either selling to a corporate group or continuing alone. We thought there should be a third option.
What has not changed
The founder is still the approved provider.
Jae is still an early childhood teacher and still the approved provider for 17 Little Scholars campuses. He is not a former operator running a consultancy.
Every system we recommend to you, we run in our own services first. That has been true since 2014, and it is the only reason any of this holds together.
