Budget 2024: ‘Poverty-line wages drive staff away’, say childcare centres

Childcare centres struggling to fill nearly 5000 job vacancies have welcomed a taxpayer-funded pay rise, saying low wages are driving workers away.

Goodstart East Sydney Early Learning Centre director Kim Boland with Tilly, 4, and Oskar, 5. Picture: Jane Dempster

Childcare centres struggling to fill nearly 5000 job vacancies have welcomed a taxpayer-funded pay rise, saying low wages are driving workers away.

Early Childhood Education Minister Anne Aly on Monday said the government was “committed to contributing funding ­towards a wage increase’’.

“Properly valuing and recognising the early childhood education and care profession is crucial to attracting and retaining workers and vital to achieving the quality universal early learning sector Australian families ­deserve,’’ she said.

She refused to say how much taxpayers would tip in for staff wages, on top of existing childcare subsidies totalling $12.7bn this ­financial year. But unions and employers warned low wages were driving workers out of childcare and forcing centres to turn families away. National Skills Commission data reveals that centres advertised 4444 jobs for carers in March. Vacancies have nearly doubled over the past three years.

Australian Childcare Alliance vice-president Nesha Hutchinson said staff were quitting to work in shops, bars or work-from-home desk jobs, usually for more money.

“The lack of staff means there are still lots of centres capping numbers of enrolments,’’ she said.

“Profit margins are really low and we just can’t fund a wage rise.

“The whole idea of the government funding wages is that staff will get the money and families won’t have to pay for it (through fee increases).”

The Children’s Services Award pays childcare workers as little as $23.11 an hour, or $45,656 a year, on par with the minimum wage. Wages for workers with a diploma in childcare start at $29.48 per hour, or $58,240 a year, and centre directors’ salaries start at $37.19 per hour, or $73,476 a year.

United Workers Union early education director Carolyn Smith said childcare workers “are barely able to survive’’. “Staff are leaving in droves and workloads for those who remain are unacceptably high,’’ she said. “Rooms are being closed regularly so families are unable to drop their kids off in the mornings, and kids are not seeing familiar faces because of the massive turnover in early educators.’’

Goodstart Early Learning, Australia’s biggest not-for-profit early childhood provider, pays its staff more than the award wage, with Certificate III qualified staff paid $27.58 an hour and diploma-qualified staff earning $31.06.

Kim Boland, the director of Goodstart’s East Sydney Early Learning Centre in Darlinghurst, said it was common for staff to “leave for a higher paid and less ­responsible job in retail or hospitality”. “Most educators come with a lot of passion for children and improving their outcomes in the first five years (of life),’’ she said. “But sometimes you have to put your own financial situation and family first.’’

Goodstart Early Learning chief executive Ros Baxter said every unfilled job meant 15 families could not find childcare. “The crucial work that educators do in supporting children’s learning and development and supporting their parents (to work) has long been undervalued,’’ she said.