Why regulation alone won’t fix early childhood quality and safety

Tightening the rules could reduce the risk, but only a truly professionalized workforce can deliver the safe, high-quality early childhood education on which Australia’s future depends, writes Roger Chao.

AUSTRALIA’S EARLY CHILDHOOD sector is at an inflection point. We have recently witnessed troubling incidents regarding safety and quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings.

Governments have responded with a new package of reforms in ECEC, strengthening incident reporting, digital security protocols and governance standards.

These steps are necessary and welcome. But these are not enough. Regulation and compliance alone cannot deliver the transformation we need. The focus must go deeper, to the heart of early childhood education: the educators themselves.

If we are serious about eliminating risk and improving quality for our youngest citizens, we must move from strengthening regulatory frameworks to truly professionalizing the workforce: attracting, training, rewarding and retaining the best people in early childhood education and care.

Regulations, standards, audits and compliance are undoubtedly important. National quality framework (NQF) and related systems provide a strong foundation for the industry. But we increasingly see that if the human, relational foundation of early childhood care is weak, simply tightening the rules is not enough.

Providers with higher staff turnover, more temporary employment, less experienced educators, and lower wages tend to have lower quality ratings. In other words, staffing, qualifications, job security and pay are just as important, if not more so, than compliance with the checklist.

When educators are under-resourced, overloaded, underpaid, or treated as adjuncts rather than professionals, the inevitable result is an erosion of quality: less experienced staff, poorer relationships with children, higher staff turnover, lower morale and therefore greater risk.

Therefore, while new reforms are vital, it must be understood that they are necessary but not sufficient. Without addressing the workforce problem, without addressing how to attract the smartest people, how to elevate professional standing, how to create career paths, and how to ensure compensation that reflects the social value of work, we will continue to see problems on the margins. You cannot lay out the path for highly motivated, well-educated, experienced professionals who choose to stay for years and deliver safe, high-quality learning in the early years.

If the early years are foundational (and they are), educators who guide, nurture and protect children in those years are among the most important professionals in our society. Neuroscience tells us that the first five years of a child’s life are critical in brain development, social, emotional and cognitive domains. The evidence is conclusive. However, when we look at the early childhood workforce, we see a mismatch between the importance of the job and working conditions.

Consider the professions that consistently attract top-quality candidates: medicine, law, engineering and research. From where? Because they offer (a) high prestige, (b) strict entry requirements, (c) structured progression, (d) competitive remuneration and (e) social recognition. In contrast, early childhood education is often treated as an ancillary service rather than a profession in its own right.

We must ask ourselves: Why do our society’s most talented potential educators—those skilled in relationships, child development, pedagogy, and leadership—choose other fields? The answer lies partly in status, partly in pay, and partly in career structure. If we want a transformed early childhood sector, the only way is to professionalize it from the ground up.

The key reform aspects that the sector needs to adopt and urgently address are:

1. Increasing the status and income of early childhood educators

We must recognize early childhood educators as full professionals with pay and conditions that reflect the complexity, responsibility, and value of the work they do. Evidence links lower pay with higher turnover, less experience and lower quality. The industry will struggle to attract the “best and brightest” if comparable qualifications in other professions earn much higher wages.

The Federal Government’s job retention payment, which funds wage increases of up to 15 per cent, is a start. But a short-term rise is not enough; this needs to become sustainable and appropriate professional remuneration.

Medicine, law and other high-status professions attract top candidates because of strong wages, clear career advancement and social prestige. Early childhood education should be seen as equally important: the first five years are the foundation of life, learning, citizenship and productivity.

We need public campaigns, scholarship pathways, career ladders and endorsements that recognize this. By targeting high school students and career changers, we should aim to attract people who might otherwise choose higher status professions by offering scholarships, bursaries and alternative pathways. We need the smartest people in this profession because we are talking about our children, the most valuable asset of the future of society.

Make early childhood education a respected career choice, visible in people’s minds as a profession of education, pedagogical leadership, and research-based practice, not “child care.” Encourage high-achieving students, more men, Indigenous educators, and people from diverse backgrounds to participate.

2. Raise entry and qualification standards

To attract and retain the brightest human talent, we need university-level entry and completion for leading educators to be common, if not standard. Certificate and diploma level qualifications are currently available, but we need to move towards higher level initial qualifications with recognized career development (such as headteacher, specialist educator, pedagogical coach). This increases prestige and attracts broader talent.

3. Create meaningful career paths and professional development

Unlike many professions, early childhood education often lacks visible career ladders, specialist roles and leadership pathways. A transformed sector would include specialist roles (pedagogy, engagement, leadership), mentoring and fellowship programmes, and continuing professional development, such as medicine or teaching in schools.

4. Improve staffing ratios and stability

Staffing levels are important for both safety and quality. Inadequate resource use leads to dependence on daily workers and weakened relationships with children. The reform agenda should allocate resources to ensure stable, experienced core teams at each centre. Legislation recognizes this, but we must invest to make it a reality.

5. Promote educator well-being and retention

A professionalized workforce is not just about employment; It’s about retention. This means working conditions, mentoring, manageable workloads, leadership opportunities and recognition. Educators are deeply committed, and we must support them accordingly.

6. Strengthen service leadership and management

Effective services combine strong leadership, collaborative cultures, reflective practices, and high expectations. Supporting center directors and lead educators with leadership development, governance oversight, peer networks, and data-driven practices is critical.

7. Embrace a culture of continuous improvement beyond compliance

The focus must shift from “meeting minimum standards” to “relentless improvement towards world-leading standards.” This means research translation, peer review networks, incentives for innovation, and an industry culture that values ​​excellence, not just compliance.

Why should we do this now and properly? Because children are the most valuable asset of our society. When children succeed, the benefits spread across generations, resulting in stronger school results, better health, improved social cohesion and greater productivity.

If we accept that the future of a nation depends on the competence, health, and well-being of children, we must count early childhood educators among the most important professionals of our time.

If we truly believe that the first five years are important (and they are), then we cannot afford to treat early childhood education as a “lower-level” service or side career. We need to raise this. If we do not do this, we leave ourselves in a future where many children start school developmentally weak, and where risk and harm arise from poor staffing and underinvestment.

Recent events in the industry are not an indictment of many dedicated educators; these are indicators of a system based on compliance rather than professional excellence.

To the workforce reading this: you are the cornerstone of our nation’s future. You deserve recognition, reward, development, leadership and status equal to the responsibility you carry.

The reform agenda calls, invites and strengthens you. If we do this right, if we elevate the profession, we will do more than respond to incident reports and regulatory setbacks; We are building a system with high performance, high trust and high impact that our children and our national future deserve.

Our children, our future depend on it.

Roger Chao is a Melbourne-based writer passionate about social justice. You can follow him on Twitter @rogerchao_aus.

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