{"id":67124,"date":"2025-08-19T14:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T04:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/?p=67124"},"modified":"2025-08-21T08:54:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T22:54:15","slug":"uwu-response-to-wa-govts-early-education-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/media-release\/uwu-response-to-wa-govts-early-education-review\/","title":{"rendered":"UWU RESPONSE TO WA GOVT\u2019S EARLY EDUCATION REVIEW"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Statement attributable to United Workers Union Early Education Director Carolyn Smith:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>United Workers Union welcomes the Cook Labor Government\u2019s considered efforts to address serious issues in the early childhood education and care sector.<\/p>\n<p>United Workers Union also regards the Education Minister\u2019s approach to mobile phone bans as a sensible way to address the safety issues raised by these devices.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of the Rapid Review\u2019s five recommendations, moves toward a stronger, nationally consistent regulatory framework make loads of sense when confronting the weaknesses that have been exposed.<\/p>\n<p>It is also good to see the recommendation highlighting the responsibility of providers to improve their focus on child safety, covering training, recruitment and safety standards.<\/p>\n<p>From the union\u2019s perspective, safer staffing starts with the need for providers to recognise that many, many centres are understaffed on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<p>Understaffing is witnessed by our recent survey of more than 2000 educators showing 77 per cent reporting their rooms were below minimum staffing levels on a weekly basis, including 42 per cent reporting their rooms were below minimum staffing levels daily.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to offer children a safe environment when educators are run off their feet and centres are regularly going below their minimum staffing requirements in rooms by using the \u201cunder the roof\u201d staffing loophole.<\/p>\n<p><strong>ENDS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Media Contact: <\/strong>1300 898 633, <a href=\"mailto:media@unitedworkers.org.au\">media@unitedworkers.org.au<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Statement attributable to United Workers Union Early Education Director Carolyn Smith: United Workers Union welcomes the Cook Labor Government\u2019s considered efforts to address serious issues in the early childhood education and care sector.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":54601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-67124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media-release","tag-early-childhood-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67125,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67124\/revisions\/67125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/development.uwu.org.au\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}