Early childhood education and care pay and conditions research: final report

Research output: Book/ReportCommissioned report

Abstract

There are approximately 220,000 educators in the ECE sector (ACECQA, 2023), serving approximately 1.3 million children from around 950,000 families. Yet Australia is experiencing a critical shortage of early childhood (EC) educators and teachers – a situation that has been growing for at least a decade. Existing evidence indicates that EC educator11’ wages and employment conditions form a significant barrier to efforts to increase and retain a capable and effective ECE workforce. The evidence strongly suggests that historical inequities related to ECE employment conditions has deterred people from entering the profession and has caused dissatisfied staff to seek employment in other sectors and professions. Evidence also points to a complex combination of system, organisation and individual factors that form barriers to attraction and retention in the sector.
This report presents the findings of a comprehensive research study commissioned by the ACT Education Directorate, on behalf of the Education Ministers Meeting (EMM) to investigate the pay and employment conditions of the ECE workforce. The commissioned study is a key action of the National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy – Shaping Our Future: A Ten-year Strategy to Ensure a Sustainable, High-quality Children’s Education and Care Workforce 2022-2031 (the National Workforce Strategy). This study responds to Focus Area 1 in this pivotal policy document – Professional recognition of the ECE workforce and responds to the recommendation to ‘investigate options for improving pay and conditions’. Overall, the research aimed to investigate factors related to ECE educator and teacher attraction and retention and generate a suite of short, medium and long-term recommendations that can be implemented by Federal, state and territory Governments as well as ECE providers.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationNorth Ryde, NSW
PublisherMacquarie University
Commissioning bodyEducation Directorate of the Australian Capital Territory
Number of pages187
Publication statusUnpublished - 1 Dec 2023

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