Yet the early childhood education and care needs to succeed. To say that teaching children how to learn in their most formative years is important is a understatement, but the sector is vey publicly failing to keep children safe. As important as the peer to peer interaction is for young children and at a time of live that is so critical, this is a major problem, and it’s not the only concern in the sector. Fair waring, this post mentions child sexual abuse.
By publicly failing to keep children safe I mean two things, the first I want to tell about is the increasing commonly reported occurrences of child sexual abuse within the sector. Since 2020, there has been over 1,856 cases of alleged child sexual abuse in childcare centres across Australia (ABC, OCT 25). Each alleged report, is one to many and is the direct result of systemic flaws in the system. The flaw is ratio remember;
It should work like this, children:
Under 2 years have a minimum ratio of 1 educator to 4 children
Between 2 and 3 have a minimum ratio of 1 educator to 5 children
3 or older have a minimum ratio of 1 educator to 11 children
In a room of 22 4-6 year olds, I would have 2 staff and 5 or so children with undiagnosed additional needs that will need extra support to engage in the routine. In a room of 4 children under the age of one I’d be flying solo, do either of those situations sound safe for anyone?’
Another systematic flaw is with inclusion support, the idea is that a child with diagnosed additional needs can access an additional educator, in the room, to assist them in their learning. The issues are the words ‘diagnosed’ and ‘additional educator’. The issue is that children must either be diagnosed or have NDIS funding to receive this help, it doesn’t cover children with behavioural issues that may harm other children or educators. Nor does inclusion support support children one on one rather you have one additional member of staff for all eligible children.
On this blog, I like offering solutions to an issue. The MEA, (multi-employer bargaining agreement) is the solution on offer. Prepared by the United Workers Union, it updates the rules that allow the above to happen. The reason that child safety is compromised is because we don’t have enough staff on the floor to watch children properly, let alone manage challenging behaviours.
The old MEA expired in august 2026, in the new MEA, the United Workers Union are fighting for new rules to prevent some of these issues. In the proposal, the United Workers Union are asking for better, more accessible inclusion support, lower ratios and better conditions for staff. Remember;
Educators are expected to read updated policies, procedures, job disruptions, any and all documents that relate to your employment in our personal time. There is often no allowance made for the time educators spend reading these documents within our entitlement. There is no penalty within our award for hours spent reading operational procedure outside of our standard hours. Room lead are allowed 2 hours of programming time a week under our award. That’s 2 hours to document, find and plan actives per the planing cycle I’ve previously discussed, a task that when done on mass like this will typically take 4 or 5, when does the rest of the programming get done, at home in our personal time, unpaid.’
Yeah, under the proposed new MEA, that won’t happen any more. Nor will children attacking educators and fellow peers or child abuse in care. That’s a good thing, the idea is that we reduce the risk to young children now and our primary and high school teachers in the future. Children need to be taught appropriate behaviours and protected form those who wish to take advantage of their innocence. Educators need the time, respect and conditions to do better. Lets work toward a industry that sets everyone up to succeed. Lets start backing the union, every educator who joins is another brick in the wall.
Last but not least, activity of the week.
With summer on the horizon here in Australia, we’re begining our routine of keeping cool via water based activities. We’re also experiencing a change in season and the bout of illnesses that come with, so lets wash and sanitise some toys whilst keeping cool.
You will need:
A tray
Water
Dish washing liquid
Sponges
Plastic toys
Fill a deep tray, like a roasting dish or a cake container with water and mix in just enough dish washing liquid to make it foam up. Add your sponges and toys and engourage your child to clean them. With any luck the water will gradually turn brown as they clean the toys.
I like using baby dolls, bath toys, toy trucks although I would avoid wooden toys as these can break if they get wet.