Company Timeline · Little Scholars School of Early Learning
Company Timeline Little Scholars School of Early Learning Prepared for Search Scope · Drew Heslehurst, Executive Director · August 2026
Milestones Year and what happened, one per line 2014 The Scholars Group Pty Ltd registered. Little Scholars founded in October by Jae Fraser, with the first campus at Yatala. Confirmed: the first campus was Yatala, October 2014. ASIC business name registration order is not opening order and should not be used as a proxy.
Canonical timeline Source: the company timeline on the Our Story page at mylittlescholars.com.au, confirmed as the authoritative record. Internal opening-date records circulated separately do not match it and are not used. 2014 Yatala opens in October: the very first campus. 2015 Stapylton opens, expanding across the M1. Grandfriends begins. 2016 Full non-contact leadership teams implemented at every campus: campus manager, assistant campus manager, educational leader and admin support. This is the structural decision the Whitepaper argument rests on, and it happened in year two. 2017 Outdoor Explorers is born, with the introduction of the Bush Kinder program. 2018 George Street opens in February. The Brisbane city campus, purpose-built, with the largest indoor playground around and a valet service for families. 2019 The Scholars Group established as the parent company. 2020 Partnership with Baby Give Back begins. The 2036 Project launches, with families shaping the long-term vision and a time capsule buried at Burleigh to be opened in 2036. Date Nights begin, among the first in Australia, covered on national television news. 2021 The Fraser Foundation launches in October, co-founded by Jae Fraser and Drew Heslehurst with a $2 million founding commitment. It provides grants and scholarships giving early childhood educators access to tertiary study and research. 2022 Jennifer Haydock joins as Quality Practice Manager. Camp Out and Beach Kinder begin. 2023 The Intergenerational Program expands with Odyssey and Feros Care, moving to fortnightly visits. Parkwood opens, on the site where Jae began his own early learning career at Kids Campus. Picnic in the Park begins. 2024 Ten-year anniversary. The first Mini-Olympics on 8 August at Griffith University, more than 200 children from all campuses, covered by 7NEWS and 9News. 2025 Deception Bay North opens on 6 January. Karalee opens on 9 June, the 17th campus and the first in Ipswich. The Science program begins. 2026 The first Art Show. The Mini Commonwealth Games.
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Company Timeline · Little Scholars School of Early Learning
Why the business was started Why was the business started? Jae Fraser began his career on the floor as an early childhood educator and worked his way up to running Australia's largest publicly listed childcare provider. That gave him the sector from both ends. He knew what good practice looked like in a room because he had done the job. He could also see, from the most senior position in the largest operator in the country, how decisions that start out being about children get reshaped on the way down. Until what arrives in the room is something else. It is structural rather than deliberate, it happens through a long series of individually reasonable compromises, and once you have watched it from the inside you cannot unsee it. He left to open a campus where that would not happen, and Little Scholars started on the Gold Coast in October 2014. The way that translated into practice is a decision rule the organisation still uses. Every question gets tested against three things, in order: what is best for the child, what is best in field, and what is nobody doing that we could be doing. The first two set the standard. The third is why the organisation keeps building things the sector has not asked for, Date Nights, Grandfriends, Outdoor Explorers, WonderNest, and why it tends to do them before anyone else. The business has stayed family-owned since, deliberately. Independence is what makes it possible to keep answering those three questions honestly rather than commercially. Standing rule: the former employer is never named. "Australia's largest publicly listed childcare provider" is the approved wording, and the story is never framed as criticism of a named organisation. The subject is a structural problem across the sector.
Direction Where is the business heading? Deeper rather than wider. The organisation has grown steadily across South East Queensland since 2014 and expects to continue serving the Gold Coast, Brisbane, the Redlands and Ipswich. But the direction is not primarily about adding campuses. It is about continuing to answer the third founding question, what is nobody doing that we could be doing, and building the answers into how every campus runs its day. In practice that means three things. Keep originating. Little Scholars was the first provider to run Date Nights and among the first in South East Queensland to run Bush Kinder, and both are now widespread. WonderNest is the current example. The intention is that there is always a next one, and that the sector keeps following. Keep giving parents their time back. The Family Time Program exists because the years with small children and two working parents are relentless, and the organisation is unusually well placed to absorb the tasks that eat a family's evenings and weekends. Expect that thinking to keep extending. Keep the quality systematic rather than incidental. The dedicated pedagogy and quality function, the regional management structure and the decision to resource non-contact roles separately all exist so that a family gets the same standard at any campus, rather than depending on who happens to be leading that centre. That infrastructure deepens as the group grows. Underneath all of it, the intention is to stay the kind of organisation where those three questions can still be asked honestly.
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Company Timeline · Little Scholars School of Early Learning
NEEDS INPUT None. Every question in this document is answered from confirmed source material.
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