Labor Governments have always valued the work of early childhood educators and we understand the importance of high-quality early childhood education and care for children and families.
The Albanese Government is committed to making early childhood education and care more affordable for Australian families. We want to ensure all communities across the country, including regional, rural, and remote communities, have access to early childhood education and care.
We know our landmark reforms are only possible if we retain, recruit, and train a high-quality early childhood education workforce, and we have a plan to deliver exactly that. Beginning with the recognition and professionalisation of the workforce:
- Recognition as a workforce of educators—not childminders
- Recognition as a workforce of highly trained experts
- Recognition as a workforce with rewarding career pathways
- And recognition that after nearly a decade of neglect and inaction from the Liberal government, changes are needed to ensure we have a sustainable early childhood education workforce.
The Government welcomed the release of the co-designed Implementation and Evaluation Plan for the National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy in September last year, following endorsement from Education Ministers.
The plan outlines 21 practical actions to support the attraction, retention, quality, and sustainability of the workforce in the long term. It commits all governments and the sector to taking the strategy actions forward as a priority including working together to bring forward longer term actions sooner.
The Albanese Government is committed to working with early childhood educators, unions, and providers to overcome the long-term issues and persistent attraction and retention challenges for the early childhood education and care sector.
For too long workers in low-paid, female dominated industries such as early childhood education and care have been shut out of the benefits of enterprise bargaining. That is why our government has legislated the Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act.
Secure Jobs, Better Pay is about making enterprise bargaining more accessible and getting wages moving for early childhood educators through the new Supported Bargaining Stream. The Supported Bargaining Stream is the best path forward for constructive negotiations to secure better pay, conditions and standards in the sector.
The Government pursued these changes with the early childhood education and care sector in mind.
We know for far too long, the sector—for which 92 per cent of the workforce are women—has been undervalued. The Government is committed to fixing the structural undervaluation which has been built into the early childhood education and care sector.
We can’t solve the damage done to the sector after a decade of neglect alone, and we know there is lots more to do.
We are continuing to work collaboratively across the board to make sure our educators stay and give children the best start in life.
