Successful NSW waivers to staff:children ratios due to labour shortages etc

Members of the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW have expressed persistent frustration about recruiting qualified early childhood educators and teachers. This coincides with ACECQA's efforts to create a national workforce strategy to address labour shortages, childcare oversupply and now early retirements due to COVID-19.

However, the NSW Department of Education has recently shared data with ACA NSW about the number of NSW-based services and number fo applications that have been successful in achieving waivers to Regulation 123 Educator-to-child ratios - centre-based services. ACA NSW members can access the full data set from the NSW Department of Education via ACA NSW's Sector Watch (NOTE: members will need to use their ACA NSW username and password.)

Given that there are currently 5,627 early childhood education and care services operating across NSW, of which 5,463 services are categorised as centre-based services, in the context of labour shortages, childcare oversupply and now early retirements due to COVID-19, ACA NSW is concerned that only 47 centre-based services applied for waiver requests via the NQAITS portal, and of which a total of 15 services to date (during 1 January 2020 to 8 December 2020) have had their waiver requests approved (which is a 31.9% approval rate).

It may well be that NSW-based services are finding the Regulation 123 waiver process via the NQAITS portal too difficult despite having legitimate reasons and also being able to address regulatory and public concerns about potential risk(s) to children when temporarily having less staff.

Should NSW-based services wish to discuss their negative experiences in relation to the above, please contact ACA NSW via 1300 556 330 or nsw@childcarealliance.org.au. 

PUBLISHED: 15 DECEMBER 2020