With the Victorian government two years into its roll-out of three-year-old kindergarten, and South Australia to follow suit next year, it remains to be seen if scholarships and pay rises will be sufficient to address the teacher shortage.
Latest research uncovered from Monash University and Flinders University has demonstrated the unique stressors faced by degree-qualified early childhood teachers in Australia, calling for an urgent need for systemic reforms to address workforce sustainability with early childhood teachers.
Their findings, Early Years: An International Research Journal, researchers Dr Leigh Disney (Monash University) and Professor Gretchen Geng (Flinders University) examine unique pandemic data that puts plans for three-year-old kindergarten in a new light.
As Professor Geng says, the current state of the early childhood education and care sector is ‘in crisis’.
“We are adding our voices to those declaring that the sector is in a state of crisis,” she says.
“This crisis and its root causes became most acute during the pandemic, but that is not when it started, and it has not gone away since.
“These insights are pivotal to addressing the chronic shortage of qualified teachers as Australian states expand kindergarten programs to include three-year-olds.
“These findings have significance for the early childhood education and care workforce today.
“Plans to expand kindergarten education, universally, to younger children are ambitious, and unless that ambition seizes the opportunity to address the real reasons that we have big shortages of qualified teachers to deliver these programs, then they are simply impossible.”
Urgent need for workforce capacity to grow
Geng is a professor in Innovative Education Futures in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work at Flinders University. Her research areas include wellbeing, stress studies, ICT use, early childhood education, higher education framework and teacher reflection.
She told EducationDaily that “we do not currently have the workforce capacity to meet the needs of all children, particularly in regional and remote locations”.
Geng says access and equity to high-quality early childhood programs are essential and a key component of building strong communities where children can thrive.
“When too much is left to too few, it can ultimately result in burnout and feelings of wanting to leave the profession,” she says.
Historically, Geng told EducationDaily, “the early childhood sector has felt particular pressures regarding its standing within society, such as low wages and societal standing”.
“The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated this feeling. Yet, internally, the joy of working with families and children is remarkable for those using the services or working within the sector,” she says.
“So, whilst we value that our early childhood professional workforce is invested in the care and education of children and their families, professional recognition of their qualifications and responsibilities is paramount to the sector’s growth.”
Sector reform is “essential”
To help address the shortages, Geng says systematic reform across sectors and society is essential.
“Strategies such as enhancing working conditions, ensuring timely and fair salary payments, and advocating for professional recognition are critical steps to alleviating the crisis.”
According to recent data, the sector requires an additional 21,000 educators to meet existing demands, with degree-qualified early childhood teachers – essential for running kindergarten programs – in particularly short supply.
“There is a profound lack of research focusing on early childhood teachers as distinct from educators,” Geng says.
“Our research shows that, during a time of severe crisis, early childhood teachers were more burdened with stress than the early childhood education workforce on average.
“Research has long shown that the whole workforce has had wellbeing challenges, and attendant workforce shortage and retention challenges.
“Even the first large-scale survey of early childhood educators and teachers, conducted only in 2016, revealed that a high proportion of the workforce felt undervalued, underpaid, and unrecognised.”
Interestingly, the findings showed that early childhood teachers who had been teaching for longer reported higher levels of stress, particularly when it came to maintaining connections with families and children.
Dr Leigh Disney is an Early Years lecturer within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He emphasises that these insights highlight the need for tailored support for early years teachers as the profession faces chronic shortages.
“This parallels the longstanding nature of the workforce shortages and the lack of professional recognition,” he says.
“Our data shows that these teachers experienced the pandemic as an amplification of existing stressors, and a confirmation of the lack of professional recognition and respect they were already experiencing.
“When push came to shove, they were treated as ‘child-minders’, not teachers.”
One respondent noted, “I lost $250 per week in income and still expected to run a kinder program despite only working 4.5 hours a day. My workplace was full of children when the government made it free. We were considered babysitters by the governments.”
Disney and Geng conclude that systemic reform is needed to address the unique challenges faced by early childhood teachers and to build a sustainable workforce capable of supporting expanded early childhood education programs.
Improving salaries, work conditions, and professional recognition is crucial, but so is how the profession is publicly perceived and spoken about. Better recognition of early childhood teachers’ educational role and status as teachers can help support and advance the profession.
“We cannot continue to shed the sector of early childhood teachers as we are currently. It is only through a holistic approach that teacher wellbeing can be given the attention it rightly deserves,” Disney says.
“This is about more than retention; this is about building a profession that can thrive and grow as the sector expands.”
Supporting early childhood educators to reach their professional potential
In an ideal world, Dr Disney told EducationDaily that “early childhood professionals would need pre-service and in-service training that allows them to grow purposefully into their professional potential”.
“This means adequate time, opportunity and funding to support professional growth. With the roll-out of extended early childhood provisions, there needs to be a similar level of financial support for continued training in leadership, pedagogical practices and wellbeing initiatives.”
He believes that creating a cultural shift that reinforces the reality that early childhood educators are more than mere child-minders must be at the heart of the sector’s future sustainability and success.
“The key is to understand that early childhood professionals are highly trained and regulated within their careers,” Disney told EducationDaily.
“The nuances of caring for children in the 0-5 age sector require a wide range of skills, knowledge and attributes. As such, wages and professional recognition need to reflect the growing accountability experienced by early childhood professionals.
“This, in turn, will support a cultural shift in the mindset of the general public towards the rewarding but demanding job of working in the early childhood sector.”