PAY RISE AND FEE CAP CRUCIAL STEPS TOWARDS PM’S VISION OF UNIVERSAL CHILDCARE
8 August 2024 – A 15 per cent per cent pay rise for early childhood educators and a cap on fee rises have been welcomed by campaigners as crucial steps toward making childcare universally accessible.
The pay rise, announced today, will be implemented over two years and will help address a nation-wide staffing crisis which has caused wait times to blow out and had an impact on Australian children and families.
Services whose staff receive the Federal Government-funded pay rise will not be able to raise the fees they charge parents more than 4.4 per cent over the next 12 months.
Jay Weatherill, from Minderoo Foundation’s Thrive by Five campaign, said the changes were a win for children, families, educators and employers.
“Early childhood educators are the backbone of the early learning sector but for far too long they have been scandalously underpaid and under-recognised,” Mr Weatherill said.
“They guide children’s learning in those important years before school, when 90 per cent of brain development occurs. They give parents the flexibility to go back to work, earn an income and contribute to the economy. They are essential workers in every sense of the word.
“Better, fairer pay will help keep educators in the sector and attract new people to the profession. This is the crucial step towards the Prime Minister’s stated vision of a universal early childhood education system.”
Mr Weatherill said the fee cap would allow more families to afford early childhood education and was a win against the cost-of-living crisis.
“The cost of childcare and preschool has been rising faster than wages, faster than inflation – it is a key contributor to the cost-of-living crisis for young families,” He said.
Following the announcement of a pay rise for aged care workers in March, vacancies in the sector dropped significantly, showing that fair wages are crucial for addressing workforce shortages in the care sector.
Thrive by Five, which has more than 100 partner organisations and more than 100,000 individual supporters, is calling for a legislated entitlement to three days of early childhood education and care per week, capped at $10 a day.
Mr Weatherill said many families could not currently access the days they wanted – or any days at all – due to staff shortages and cost.
“A well-resourced and well-staffed early learning sector will enable many more families to access early learning and care,” he said.
“By enabling more parents to re-enter the workforce, should they choose to, this wage increase will also give a significant boost to the economy through increases in parents’ workforce participation.
“During a cost-of-living crisis, investing in early childhood education is the non-inflationary economic boost we desperately need.”
Mr Weatherill said the pay rise was also good for gender equality, with 92 per cent of workers in early childhood education being women.
“This is really about saying that we as a society value women’s work just as much as men’s,” he said.
