The NSW Department of Education released its Early Childhood Education Workforce Strategy 2018-2022 on 8 August 2018.
It reflects the Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools through Early Childhood Interventions (2017) which recommended that governments support the recruitment, retention, sustainability and enhanced professionalisataion of the workforce, thereby improving service quality and children's outcomes.
However, despite the government's published intentions, the Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW remains unclear as to how the NSW Government will exactly address the current and significant labour shortages of Diploma qualified educators and Degree qualified teachers at least in the short term. Such labour shortages was confirmed in the NSW Department of Education’s Literature Review, albeit referring to 2014-2017.
For example:
- How many Diploma qualified educators and Degree qualified teachers are needed each year?
- If services are genuinely unable to recruit Diploma qualified educators and/or Degree qualified teachers due to labour shortages, what flexibilities will the NSW Department of Education provide in terms of waivers or similar?
- If such waivers were given, how will the NSW Department of Education assess and rate those affected services? Or will they be automatically penalised due to their inability to recruit quality educators and/or teachers?
These are issues that ACA NSW are currently pursuing with the NSW Department of Education and the NSW Government.