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| What is the single biggest issue facing the Australian ECEC sector?
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Close to 4500 parents/carers and early childhood providers completed the 2016 Annual Child Care and Workforce Participation survey. The results offer unique insight into the daily experiences of Australian families and the health of the Australian child care system.
This year we wrote a series of questions specifically for early childhood education and care providers, those at the coalface of our system, delivering the high quality care that Australian families have become accustomed to.
We asked providers to identify the single biggest issue facing the Australian early childhood education and care sector and the results offer amazing insight into the challenges faced by people working in the sector.
What you said
We have chosen a representative sample of the responses to share with you this week:
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"That the provision of early education and care is centred around a return to work agenda rather than education."
"In OSHC the regulation that requires 3.25sq m of space per child limits the number of children services can have when we desperately need more places available.
"Quality vs Quantity, there is a lot of pressure on early years trained teachers to provide quality learning experiences, but the programming hours and pay do not support teachers."
"Large companies monopolising the sector - more interested in dividends than quality. People should never have been able to make a profit from ECEC. ECEC should have been left in the hands of community based and not for profit sector."
"Too many children in centres: It's impossible to properly care for and educate under 3s when they are herded in such large numbers. The individual needs of children are forsaken for routine and time management. Increasing the ratios has not helped children it's meant more children in one room to help cover the cost of all the part time and casual staff they have floating around!"
"The government continues to waste valuable $$$ doing Productivity Reviews, Assessments, Investigations ... blah, blah, blah. I was trained 20 years ago and the same issues keep going around in circles. Each new government keeps wasting time and money trying to re-invent the wheel. Until early childhood educators are paid like other teachers our sector will continue to see a shortage."
"Trying to balance the workload within working hours. Many workers take work home or do additional research, or purchase resources in their own time. Over time this has an impact on maintaining a healthy work/life balance."
"The amount of time I spend on outcomes and not the children."
"Mounting paperwork and red tape wearing educators out and taking away from quality time spent with the children."
"Increasing parental expectations. Demand from parents for longer hours of care. Many centres will need to operate 12 hours per day. This adds further pressure on staffing and maintaining quality. Children also deserve time at home."
"I am a nanny and what is affecting our industry is the amount of unregulated au pairs taking our roles. Often the au pairs are asked to complete nanny duties which is not in their job criteria for e.g., caring for kids under 2, expected to provide high quality child care that only a trained professional can. I'm hoping the nanny pilot program is successful as families need to be given a helping hand from the government if they choose to have a nanny over using a day care centre."
"Cost: Families pay big money, and only a very small percentage of that goes to the people who work directly with the children and their families."
"I wholeheartedly support the NQS however the conflicting policy of the several government departments in supporting the delivering of quality care services creates uncertainty among parents and places additional community responsibilities onto the child care educators who have not been professionally trained to deal with the issues government policy expects."
"The main priority should be the children, but unfortunately writing about the children has become the priority."
This is a human service and cannot just be taught in a classroom the sector desperately needs on the job training and mentoring before any educator can be responsible for a group of children."
"Lack of qualified staff in rural and remote areas."
"Not respected or valued by families or governments; research tells us that the early childhood years are the most important of our lives yet the funding, conditions and pay do not reflect this."
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