Regarding today’s reporting by Four Corners on serious safety issues within the early education and care sector, the statement below is attributable to United Workers Union’s National President, Jo Schofield:
Reports by ABC’s Four Corners today are placing a much-needed focus on the systemic issues created by for-profit companies in early childhood education and care.
Educators, United Workers Union and parents are united in wanting an early childhood education and care sector that gives children the best start in life.
Educators across the sector are familiar with some of the issues that have been raised in the reporting, including understaffing due to a failure to attract and retain staff, largely because of low wages.
However most educators’ experience has been that educators in for-profit providers face greater pressures than their peers in not-for-profit providers.
This can result in higher turnover and educators being placed in situations where it is hard, if not impossible, to provide the quality of education and care needed by families.
United Workers Union’s early educators will be shocked and saddened by the experiences shared by parents in today’s reports, and no parent should have to go through what has been reported.
These same educators will also see the issues as a betrayal of the safety processes and considerations they embed in their daily routines to ensure children’s safety.
The reporting raises questions about the leniency of a waiver system that allows high percentages of centres – almost one in five in recent years – to operate without a full complement of staff.
United Workers Union has repeatedly raised the issue of educator shortages impacting the quality of education and care children receive, the issue of for-profit centres putting profits before children, and high levels of staffing waivers across the sector.
United Workers Union acknowledges the Federal Labor Government’s move to stabilise the sector by increasing educators’ pay by 15 per cent, which has already resulted in improved retention and hiring outcomes, and is addressing some of the understaffing plaguing the sector.
A sector that has appropriate numbers of educators also starts to remove the sector’s reliance on waivers, and is a vital first step in addressing some of the safety issues being aired today.