Above award, brand new centre, and no-one responding to ECEC job ads

Brady Bunch Early Learning Centre in Ballarat, Victoria, is due to open a third service in the Sebastopol-Delacombe area and despite Director Rachel Condon offering above award wages, some advertisements have attracted zero applications, reflecting the dire state of the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce shortages. 

“It’s not just us,” she told local media source The Courier. “It’s every single service.” 

The wages paid to those working in the sector, she believes, are the biggest barrier to overcoming a critical shortage of staff that is forcing some centres to turn away families.

There is surging demand for care as more families wait to return to work as cost of living rises, however in a market of near full employment, getting applicants to choose ECEC over other more highly paid and less demanding options is a challenge. 

Brady Bunch has been recruiting over recent months and placing new staff in its two existing centres to be ready to transfer to the new facility when it opens in the coming weeks, saying she feels “very fortunate” to have recruited the staff she has. 

Staff from Ballarat have even been travelling to Brady Bunch’s Bendigo early learning centre to help fill staffing shortages, but that excess capacity will evaporate once the new Sebastopol centre opens.

“I have heard of centres having to knock back families because of lack of staff but we’ve been very fortunate not to,” she told the local news service.

Speaking with The Courier, Federation TAFE ECEC lecturer Richard Nash said the sector was a victim of very low unemployment, and its own success.

Services, he explained, are opening “at a rate of knots” but the elephant in the room is the amount of responsibility placed on the shoulders of educators is not consistent with their compensation. 

“Everyone who wants a job has got a job and attracting people out of a supermarket or other job…to be a childcare (sic.) worker, they’re probably going to take a cut to their pay for the extra responsibility,” he continued.  Wage rises, he said, should not be put on the shoulders of parents. 

“It’s up to the government to fund the places appropriately,” he told the paper. 

“There’s research you can’t jump over that says the most influential years for a child’s learning is zero to five. Education doesn’t start in prep, it starts at birth and the vital part is us in childcare, yet the wages don’t reflect that.”

Access the original coverage here.