Poor pay conditions of early childhood workers will be raised by Member for Northern Tablelands Richard Torbay, at the next session of Parliament.
He will seek the support of other MPs to mount a state-wide petition to gather the 10,000 signatures necessary to trigger a full debate on the issue.
After a recent meeting with local sector workers at St Peter’s Pre-School in Armidale, Mr Torbay was informed diploma trained childcare staff received less pay than workers in the fast food industry or at supermarket checkouts.
“It’s an anomalous situation where there is pressure for early childcare educators to upskill with TAFE and university qualifications but with no incentive to remain in the sector in terms of their pay packets,” he said.
“I am supporting the drive for university trained early childhood teachers to receive pay parity with primary school teachers. As it stands, many are leaving to seek better jobs, leaving a serious gap in what is seen as a critical area of education if children are to perform well at school and later in life.”
Mr Torbay said figures showed 180 early childhood educators were leaving the sector each week, amounting to around 10,000 a year.
“Extra funding has been allocated to provide more places in pre-schools for four-year-olds but not with accompanying funding for staff,” he said. “It is a disgraceful situation.”
Early childhood educators with tertiary qualifications are leaving the pre-school sector to receive 20 per cent more pay as primary school teachers .
“There is a huge turnover of educators as they seek more income,” Mr Torbay said. “The job comes with enormous responsibilities and duties of care as well as documentation of children’s development, which is time consuming and often undertaken outside work hours.
“While there is pressure to keep these services affordable to ensure access, there is no excuse for taking advantage of early childhood educators to achieve this policy.”
The recent Productivity Com-mission report on the Early Childhood Development Workforce stated that, for a sufficient number of early childhood teachers to be attracted and retained in long day care to meet the reforms in the National Quality Standard and National Partnership agreement, salaries would need to be competitive with those offered to primary teachers in the school sector.
