The Top 3 Childcare Centres in Northcote, VIC (3070)

Annie Dennis Children’s Centre operates from Oldis Avenue with 98 approved places, the largest of the three ranked centres. It is community-run rather than part of a group operator, and opens 7:30am to 6:00pm on weekdays.

Its April 2024 assessment returned Exceeding, above the standard in five of the seven quality areas: educational program and practice, staffing arrangements, relationships with children, collaborative partnerships with families, and governance and leadership. The assessment before it, in December 2018, also returned Exceeding. A regulatory visit in November 2025 found no conditions on the service approval and no enforcement actions in the preceding two years.

Annie Dennis takes first place on a comparison that comes down to two things, because a third is missing. It and Clifton Street both hold Exceeding, both have held it across two consecutive assessments, and both are community-run — so neither the rating nor the track record separates them. Annie Dennis is eighteen months newer, April 2024 against October 2023, and it is the larger centre at 98 places to 81. What cannot be compared is price: Annie Dennis publishes no fee on the register at all, where Clifton Street publishes $154.00. That is a real gap in what this page can tell you, and it is worth a phone call before you decide, because on every other axis these two are close enough that the fee could reasonably settle it. The two are also strong in different places — Annie Dennis on governance and leadership, Clifton Street on physical environment — which is the more useful comparison if you know which matters to you.

Clifton Street Childrens Centre runs from Clifton Street with 81 approved places, and keeps the same 7:30am to 6:00pm weekday hours as Annie Dennis. Like Annie Dennis it is community-run rather than part of a group.

Its October 2023 assessment returned Exceeding, above the standard in educational program and practice, physical environment, staffing arrangements, relationships with children, and collaborative partnerships with families. The assessment before it, in December 2017, also returned Exceeding — more than eight years of unbroken Exceeding across two consecutive assessments, the longest such record in Northcote. A regulatory visit in February 2026 found no conditions and no enforcement actions in the preceding two years.

Clifton Street is second by eighteen months and by very little else. It holds Exceeding in five quality areas, the same count as Annie Dennis, and it has held the rating longer than any service in the suburb — since December 2017, confirmed again in October 2023. It is also the only one of the two that tells you what it charges: $154.00 a day, published on the register, against a centre that publishes nothing. If you are choosing between them and price matters, this is the one you can plan around today. The counts match but the composition does not: Clifton Street is above the standard on physical environment where Annie Dennis is not, and Annie Dennis is above the standard on governance and leadership where Clifton Street is not. One reservation to carry: the register lists no inclusions against the fee, which is not the same as there being none — ask what the $154.00 covers before comparing it with anything.

Only About Children Northcote operates from Victoria Road with 93 approved places and the longest weekday hours of the three, 7:15am to 6:15pm — a quarter-hour earlier and later at each end than the two centres above it.

Its April 2024 assessment returned Meeting across all seven quality areas, repeating the Meeting result from April 2019. The service carries one condition on its approval, requiring that climbable or moveable outdoor play equipment on levels above the ground floor is not placed within 1.9 metres of the perimeter fencing. That clause appears on ten services across ten unrelated providers and is applied to a class of above-ground-floor premises rather than imposed in response to anything this centre did. A regulatory visit in April 2026, the most recent of the three, recorded no enforcement actions in the preceding two years.

Only About Children Northcote is third because it holds Meeting where the two above it hold Exceeding, and on this site the national standard leads. What it offers instead is certainty about what you are buying. It is the only centre on this page that publishes both a fee and an inclusions list: $205.00 a day covering every meal, nappies, education programs and excursions. Annie Dennis publishes no fee at all and Clifton Street lists no inclusions, so this is the one place in Northcote where a family can see the full picture before ringing anyone. It is also open longest, 7:15am to 6:15pm. Set against that, $205.00 is the higher of the two rates published on this page — $51.00 above Clifton Street, with Annie Dennis publishing none — and the rating has sat at Meeting across two assessments five years apart, so there is no upward movement to read into it. The condition on its approval is a building-design clause shared with nine other services and is not a mark against the centre.