As we head to the election, Educator Lyndal says she is ‘fed up’ with parties missing the mark

With the Federal Election to be held 21 May 2022, a number of peak bodies, advocacy organisations and individual educators have put forward their perspectives about what would be best to save the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector from the ongoing challenges of workforce shortages and other issues. 

Lyndal Mayer is one educator who has spoken out, sharing with the ABC her frustrations about Australia’s major political parties, who she says are “constantly missing the mark”. 

Ms Mayer, who is also Chief Executive of Queensland Lutheran Early Childhood Services, said she had watched the critically understaffed and “misappropriated” funded ECEC sector deteriorate over the years.

Reflecting on recent research from Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute in relation to the availability of care, she shared that “there’s not enough space” in the current system to meet demand for care and rather than “throwing money at families”, politicians should invest in professionalising the sector to attract more staff. 

Affordability of care, she said, is less of an issue than access and availability. 

“What is the point of making the service affordable, when there are no places actually available?” she asked, calling on the Government to increase the wage of educators so that they would be on par with those in the school system, something she believes would attract quality educators to the sector. 

If the money allocated to cover the Child Care Subsidy could instead be used by services to meet their operational costs, the price of care could be dropped, making it more affordable for families, she continued. 

To read the ABC coverage of this story, please see here.