Before and After School Care (OSHC) Cleaning
OSHC cleaning for before school, after school and vacation care programs in Melbourne, built around the fact that the room is not yours for long. We clean between your session and the school's, reset the space to the layout teachers expect, and leave a signed log for your coordinator. Our other programs for early learning services are listed on our full list of childcare cleaning services.
Most of the programs we look after run in halls, libraries, art rooms or classrooms that belong to someone else, and that changes almost everything about how the cleaning is planned.
- 8:45 amRoom back to the school
- 3:15 pmRoom over to OSHC
- 6:15 pmProgram closes, we clean
- WWCC checkedNeeded on school grounds too
- Police checkedEvery cleaner on the roster
- $20M insuredCertificate for the school file
- Signed logsFor the coordinator's records
How quickly can OSHC cleaning turn a room around?
An after school clean for a typical program room takes well under an hour with two cleaners, and it happens once the last child is collected. The bigger pressure is the morning, when a breakfast club must be packed away and the room ready for class within minutes.
One shared room across a school day. The yellow block is ours; the teal blocks belong to your program.
That morning squeeze is why good OSHC cleaning is really two jobs. The main clean happens in the evening, when the room is empty and there is time to do eating surfaces, toilets, floors and any craft mess properly. The morning is a short turnaround, where breakfast tables are wiped, crumbs are swept and chairs go back where the class left them, and it is usually done by your educators with a checklist we write for your room.
Where a program runs a large breakfast club, or the room goes straight to a class at 9 am, we can send someone for the morning turnaround as well. It is booked as a short separate visit with its own price, which means it can be dropped later without touching the evening clean.
Speed never comes at the cost of the high-risk surfaces. Food prep benches, the toilets the program uses and any tables children ate at are cleaned and, where needed, disinfected at every visit. What a faster turnaround trims is the rotation work, which moves to the quieter nights instead.
Breakfast clubs deserve particular care because food is being served in a room that is about to become a classroom. Regulation 77 of the national regulations expects safe handling, preparation and storage of food, so the benches, toaster area and fridge the program uses are cleaned with food-safe products in the evening, ready for the next morning, rather than rushed at 8.40.
Programs do run late sometimes, when a parent is held up or an incident needs writing up. Our team waits rather than cleaning around children, and if the delay pushes the clean past the school's lock-up time, we agree the new time with the business manager so the alarm and gates are handled properly.
What does an after school care clean include?
Six areas are covered every afternoon: eating tables and chairs, the snack kitchen, the toilets the program uses, craft and activity surfaces, touch points such as handles and switches, and the floor. Bins are emptied, and the room is reset to the school's layout before we leave.
- Eating tables and chairs
Washed with detergent, including edges and chair backs, then dried so nothing sticky is left for the class.
- Snack kitchen
Benches, sink, fridge handle, microwave and toaster area, cleaned with food-safe products only.
- Program toilets
Toilets, basins, taps and dispensers in the block the program uses, cleaned then disinfected.
- Craft and activity areas
Paint, glue, playdough and glitter cleared from tables, sinks and the floor around them.
- Touch points
Door handles, light switches, the sign-out tablet and any shared equipment children handle.
- Floors and bins
Swept and mopped or vacuumed, bins emptied and relined, rubbish taken to the school's skip.
What does vacation care cleaning involve?
Vacation care turns a part-time room into a full-time one for two weeks, with meals, cooking, craft and excursion days. We switch to a daily clean for those weeks and finish with a deep clean on the last Friday, so the school gets its room back ready for term.
Sample fortnight. Excursion days can drop to a lighter clean if the room is barely used.
Vacation care days are long and messy in ways a normal afternoon is not. Children eat morning tea and lunch on site, cooking activities use the kitchen properly, and theme days bring glitter, paint, slime and sand. The daily clean is scoped for that: kitchen benches and appliances, every eating table, toilets, floors, and a craft area reset so the next theme day starts clean.
Cooking days and shared lunches raise the question of allergens. Most schools ask families to keep certain foods out, but traces still end up on tables and benches. Washing eating surfaces with detergent and water lifts food residue off the surface, where a quick spray and wipe can simply spread it around, so every eating table is washed rather than sprayed.
Excursion days are the exception. If most children are out, the room barely changes, so we drop to a lighter visit that checks toilets and bins and leaves the full clean for the next day. That saving shows on the invoice.
The end-of-holidays clean is the one schools notice. Floors are scrubbed rather than mopped, chairs and tables are washed top to bottom, the kitchen is cleaned out, and anything the program brought in is packed back into its storage. It follows the same list as our term break deep cleaning for centres, cut down to the areas the program actually uses.
Programs that run vacation care at a different site from term-time care get a separate scope and log for that venue, so nothing is confused between the two.
Which details do we need for an OSHC quote?
Tell us where the program runs, which rooms it uses, the days it operates and whether you run vacation care. A fixed written price for term time and a separate price for vacation care come back within 24 hours, both with GST shown.
If the school has asked you for insurance certificates, a list of cleaners or evidence of Working with Children Checks, say so and we will send those with the quote. Schools often want the paperwork before the program can sign anything, and it saves a week of back and forth. For how we work across every kind of early learning service in the city, see our page on childcare cleaning in Melbourne.
- 1Program detailsVenue, rooms, days and vacation care weeks.
- 2Space split agreedWe draft the program and school list for sign-off.
- 3First cleanKeys, sign-in and a log from the first afternoon.
What do OSHC coordinators ask us?
The three questions below come from coordinators and school business managers weighing up a cleaner for the first time.
01Can you clean in under an hour?
02Vacation care?
03School hall spaces?
Your program cleaned, the school's room handed back on time.
Term time and vacation care priced separately, in writing.