Squiggles and Giggles Early Learning Childcare’s Ghada Diab says staff shortages have been a concern for a long time and will become more critical when international students, who had been allowed to work full-time as a measure during covid, will have to go back to working no more than 24 hours a week.
“Most of my staff have been with me for eight to 10 years, we are one of the lucky ones, so it does not affect us but I know of other services who will struggle to replace their international student staff,” she said.
“Also many young people these days aren’t interested in going straight from school into childcare as they used to because the government study and training incentives are not there any more.
“It’s definitely getting harder to find good employees but that is happening in many industries, especially since covid.”
Across a single week in February 2023, according to the ACA survey, more than two thirds of the 627 centres surveyed confirmed enrolments that week had been capped, which equated to a total of 16,300 places cut off from Australian families.
ACA President Paul Mondo said the shortage of qualified early childhood educators and teachers was the single most pressing issue facing Australia’s early learning sector.
