6 years ago
VALUING OUR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS
AMANDA RISHWORTH MP
Today is Keep Your Children at Home Day.
Keep Your Children at Home Day is being led by United Voice and early educators around the country who are fighting for their fair wage.
Labor recognises that quality early education and care can only be provided by a skilled, professional and well paid workforce.
The early learning quality agenda Labor introduced means our early childhood educators are more qualified and skilled than ever.
It is not right that those who educate our youngest minds earn less than half the average national wage.
As skilled professionals, it is right that those educators who we trust shape our youngest citizens are paid a wage which is in line with the quality we expect from them.
This should matter to everyone who values early education and child care. Our early educators play an important role in giving our children the best start in life. They should receive our support in return.
If the Turnbull Government was serious about a fair wage for our early childhood educators they would be sitting down and talking with them about a pathway forward.
Instead the Turnbull Government are not giving our early childhood educators and their representatives the respect they deserve.
This is from a government that has form when it comes to neglecting issues facing our early education workforce. Their hit list includes:
Allowing the Early Years Workforce Strategy introduced by Labor in 2012 to expire in 2016
Abolishing the Long Day Care Professional Development Program
Ending funding for the Professional Support Coordinators.
The Turnbull Government’s own unfair child care package fails to value the importance of early childhood education, and treats early years learning as nothing but a babysitting service.
This has been highlighted by reducing access to subsidised education and care, some of our most vulnerable families and reinforced by the government’s removal of all references to early education and learning from the Department’s website.
Our early educators and the important work they do deserve to be properly valued.