Australia needs 16,000 new educators to fill shortfall in childcare sector, inquiry told
Australia will need to hire 16,000 new early childhood educators to address shortages and meet increased demand after the federal government pledged billions in childcare subsidies.
Labor has announced a $4.7bn policy to further subsidise childcare from July 2023 as part of its plan to improve women’s participation in the workforce.
But John Cherry from Goodstart Early Learning said the country would need to employ an additional 9,000 childcare workers and fill the 7,000 vacancies the sector already faced to meet the rise in enrolments.
Early childhood education centres are already struggling to keep up. At Goodstart, between 80 and 100 centres have capped enrolments due to staff shortages.
“Parents are sitting on a waiting list, waiting for a spot to open up while the centre director is desperately scrambling trying to find staff so that she can take in those families,” Cherry told a Senate committee on Monday.
Since 2020, the number of staff vacancies at Goodstart has doubled and attrition rates have increased from 14 to 24%.
In the regions, Cherry said up to 40% of early childhood educators were leaving the sector.
Sign up for our free morning and afternoon email newsletters from Guardian Australia for your daily news roundup Low pay, burnout and lack of professional recognition are the main forces driving the mass exodus.
“Lots of people are telling us they could earn more stacking shelves at Coles or Bunnings – and they absolutely can,” he said.
Cherry has called on the government to fund an immediate 10% rise for early childhood workers. He said this increase wouldn’t be enough in the long term but would reduce attrition to stabilise the sector.
The wage expansion would have to be sponsored by the government because most childcare centres couldn’t put up pay without increasing fees, Cherry said.
“We’d love to provide a pay rise to educators to match school rates, but to provide a 20 to 30% pay rise would involve a fee increase of 20%, which would simply make childcare unaffordable to our families.”
Cherry told the committee he had never seen the childcare industry in such dire straits and the flow-on economic consequences would be profound.
“Every vacancy we have can affect up to 15 other families,” he said.
“With the 7,200 new vacancies we had last month multiplied by 15, the potential worst-case scenario of how many families are affected by this is overwhelming.”