Childcare centres shocked at second-rate training of staffworkers

In some cases, students graduated without ever having set foot in a daycare centre. (Stock picture)

Changing a baby’s nappy is an essential skill for daycare workers, yet Paul Mondo has seen fresh recruits put nappies on back to front.

The Australian Childcare Alliance secretary is aghast at the poor calibre of some supposedly qualified jobseekers. “There’s ongoing concern from childcare providers about the quality of training provided to staff,’’ he tells Inquirer. “I’ve even seen people putting nappies on backwards.’’

The federal government’s training watchdog, the Australian Skills Quality Authority, this week exposed scandalous shortcomings in the training of daycare workers.

“Training courses are often being delivered in too short a time to enable the development of sufficient skills and knowledge and for valid assessment decisions to be made,’’ ASQA concludes in its report.

Some private colleges have been churning out graduates after just a week’s online training. Australia’s training ministers have decreed that a Certificate III course — the minimum for a childcare qualification — should take one or two years of full-time study to complete. Yet 70 per cent of childcare certificates were delivered in less than a year — and 20 per cent within six months.

ASQA found that some course teachers had no experience or qualifications in the childcare industry, and merely gave students pamphlets to study without supervision. In some cases, students graduated without having set foot in a daycare centre.

Migrants with English skills so poor they could not even communicate with children were handed certificates and diplomas in childcare. “If you ask a student to bring a bucket, they don’t understand,’’ one childcare centre director complained to the ASQA auditors. “It makes it difficult when students have to interact with children because neither understands each other.’’

Such second-rate training would never be tolerated in schools. Yet what the ASQA report reveals is that the 700,000 babies, toddlers and preschoolers in daycare centres potentially are being cared for 10 hours a day by staff without training or experience. Early Childhood Australia chief executive Samantha Page, who is part of the ASQA review team, says it is crucial all daycare workers are “competent, skilled and know what they’re doing’’.

“We’re investing a lot of money in early childhood services so we have good reason, and a right as a society, to expect services are of good quality,’’ she tells Inquirer.

Page insists childcare workers need a “basic level of literacy’’. “They’ve got to be able to read medicine and food labels, to follow instructions and policies, and fill out documentation of children’s learning,’’ she says. “It’s easy to look after a healthy child but when a child is sick, you need to know what to do.’’

New rules that force daycare centres to employ more and better qualified staff are creating an enrolment boom. The number of students in Certificate III courses more than doubled from 8389 in 2008 to 18,178 in 2012. The number of diploma students almost trebled from 11,417 in 2010 to 31,044 in 2013.

The federal Department of Employment estimates childcare centres will need to hire 21,600 extra workers between 2013 and 2018 to comply with new staffing ratios.

The extra wage costs are fuelling daycare fees for families, whose out-of-pocket costs for childcare soared six times faster than inflation last financial year. The Abbott government plans to boost daycare subsidies from $6.5 billion this financial year to $11bn a year in 2018-19.

Despite the spiralling costs, a third of childcare centres operate in breach of the national quality standards imposed three years ago. One in 20 centres has been granted a government waiver from the rules for staffing or facilities because there are not enough qualified workers.

ASQA began its audit after Inquirer revealed last September that childcare centres were concerned about private colleges offering fast-tracked qualifications. Two-thirds of the 77 colleges audited by ASQA failed. Even after being given 20 days to rectify problems, 24 — one-third — were still in breach of regulatory requirements.

Education and Training Assistant Minister Simon Birmingham has instructed ASQA to audit childcare training organisations more often and penalise those that fail.

ASQA chief commissioner Chris Robinson tells Inquirer that eight colleges have been deregistered.

“We shouldn’t have seen so many issues uncovered in the first place,’’ he says.