The Australian Childcare Alliance (ACA) NSW members were informed in early June 2019 of the extremely significant concerns about the expiry of Regulation 242 on 1 January 2020 which would stop all services from allowing any staff to be "Actively Working Towards" their higher qualification. This, in turn, would not only cause severe recruitment difficulties but could also put existing staff at risk of their continuing employment in order for services to remain in compliance.

ACA NSW members would recall its urgent request of NSW Minister for Education and Early Childhood Learning, the Hon Sarah Mitchell MLC, to have Regulation 242 extended for another 2 years to 1 January 2022.

The Education Council (comprising of all federal, states and territories' Ministers for Education) appear to have decided on 28 June 2019 that it would:

"... extend a number of expiring transitional workforce provisions in
the Education and Care Services National Regulations,
to address the continued pressures faced by the sector in building
a highly skilled early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce,
particularly in rural and remote areas."

Regulation 242 had previously been extended to 2018 and again to 2020. Unfortunately, the near-universally common experience of service providers is the extreme difficulty to recruit good and job-ready teachers, and hence the necessity of using Regulation 242 until the current labour shortages have been sufficiently resolved.

ACA NSW will update members as soon as more information is released.

PUBLISHED: 2 JULY 2019