More than 20,000 early childhood educators are urgently needed across Australia to keep up with current staffing demands, a new study has found.

Commissioner for Jobs and Skills Australia, Professor Barney Glover AO, today released a workforce report into the sector which employs about 200,000 workers across the country.

The report makes 28 key findings and 41 recommendations.

Professor Glover said the report found 21,000 more qualified professionals were imminently required, a figure which increases “when looking at what we’ll need in the future”.

“Current workforce levels are not sustainable,” he said.

“We need growth of 8 per cent to meet sustainable staffing levels, and another 8 per cent growth to meet unmet demand for services.”

Professor Glover said the most profound finding in the report was the need for support of diverse communities including those in remote areas.

“[We need to] make sure our workforce is ready to support young children from a variety of backgrounds.”

Professor Glover highlighted the importance of early childhood education saying “a child that has access to early childhood education and care is significantly more likely to go into tertiary education”.

“One thing is abundantly clear to Jobs and Skills Australia and that is to obtain 80 per cent of the working population, with a tertiary education, by 2050, we’ve got to start in early education,” he said.

Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles said the federal government recognised the need for more professionals in the early childhood workforce, and was committed to attracting more workers into the profession.

“That’s not enough for today and it’s certainly not enough when it comes to the ambitions we have for high quality early childhood care and education sector,” he said.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’ve invested more than $3.6 billion in a wage increase to encourage people to think about the sector and to think about staying in the sector.

“It’s absolutely vital that we sustain a workforce that will support high quality education and care that’s affordable for every Australian family, but also which enables every Australian child to have the best start in their life.”

Ongoing learning vital for educators

Professor Glover said “the professionalism of early childhood education careers is absolutely vital” for the industry to be sustainable.

He said there was a clear need to make it a “more attractive career path to young people to enter” and more rewarding as a career option.

Goodstart Early Learning Reynella centre director Dem Eccleston said staff shortages had forced her to turn away families wanting to enrol their children.

“It’s difficult to turn them away because you really do feel for them,” she said. 

Ms Eccleston said wages was one of the main reasons educators leave the sector.

“The pay we were getting previously has never really hit the mark for people,” she said.

“So they’re leaving the sector to find positions that will pay the bills, get things done for them.

Ms Eccleston said the loss of experienced educators meant younger educators were not getting the training required to effectively do their job.

She said the 15 per cent pay increase, recently introduced by the government, would help attract more workers.

South Australian education minister Blair Boyer said he accepted the report’s “brilliant recommendations” and the challenge to attract more workers.

“It has been an undervalued and underpaid profession for my entire lifetime and probably forever … a 15 per cent pay increase to childhood workers in South Australia is going to be enormous in terms of keeping staff there,” he said.