National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy
The
National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy (2022-2031) supports the recruitment, retention, sustainability and quality of the sector workforce. Facilitated by ACECQA, national sector stakeholders and all Australian governments have closely collaborated to co-design
'Shaping Our Future', a ten-year workforce strategy to help ensure a sustainable, high-quality children's education and care workforce.
'Shaping Our Future' acknowledges and builds on the significant investment by all governments to date in workforce related initiatives, as well as a range of recent and ongoing initiatives launched by the sector. It provides a roadmap for ongoing collaboration and partnership between all parties, including governments, service providers, education and training providers, peak associations, regulatory bodies, and educators and teachers, and their representative bodies.
The ten-year timeframe for the strategy recognises the complexity of the workforce challenges faced by the sector and provides a call to action for all stakeholders to work towards ambitious goals.
Implementing the strategy is a collective responsibility between all stakeholders. With the release of the Strategy, work will now commence with all governments and sector stakeholders to co-design implementation and evaluation plans to guide collaborative efforts to achieve the strategy's objectives.
Implementation and evaluation
An implementation and evaluation plan has been collaboratively developed by national sector stakeholders and government representatives to support and guide efforts to achieve the objectives of the National Workforce Strategy,
Shaping our Future. The
full plan (PDF, 13MB) is available. The implementation and evaluation plan outlines the steps that will be taken to progress, monitor and review all 21 actions in Shaping Our Future. The plan supports and complements areas of action and commitments outlined in other national strategies, including those which support the Closing the Gap Agreement such as the
Early Childhood Care and Development Sector Strengthening Plan (PDF, 533KB).
A
complimentary new and enhanced workforce initiatives summary (PDF, 314KB) is also available.
Queensland's workforce initiatives
Queensland’s workforce initiatives will ensure our early childhood workforce are empowered, engaged and supported to deliver quality early learning programs and services.
The department will deliver workforce initiatives that align with our
Strategic Plan 2021-2025.
Working with the early childhood sector we will facilitate a skilled and qualified early years workforce and provide a
Great start for all children.
Workforce planning
Effective workforce planning supports early childhood services to address the long-term needs of their workforce. Comprehensive workforce planning is essential for supporting the delivery of high-quality early learning programs delivered by capable, confident and qualified educators.
Workforce planning is a continuous process of identifying:
- current and existing skills within the workforce
- desired future skills
- workforce gaps
- strategies and actions to address identified gaps.
Workforce planning strategies and actions may include, but are not limited to:
- training
- professional development
- recruitment
- attraction
- retention strategies.
A
workforce planning online course containing 4 self-paced modules is available to assist staff to improve their existing workforce plans. The modules offer content scalable to staff new to workforce planning as well as more experienced practitioners.
In addition to the online course, the
workforce plan template and
guide to workforce planning are designed to assist early childhood services to implement effective workforce planning strategies.
The use of the workforce plan template is not mandatory, rather provides services with a sample tool for guidance in the development of workforce plans.
Through the development and implementation of a locally informed, service specific plan to meet current and future staffing requirements, ECEC services will be best placed to operate efficiently and deliver high quality programs for all children.
Research projects
Learn more about: joining the early childhood and education workforce.
Previous workforce action plans
Workforce Action Plan 2016–2019
Workforce Action Plan 2011—2014