The Early Childhood Workforce Challenge: How Centres Can Better Support and Retain Educators

There is something quietly extraordinary about the work that happens inside an early childhood centre every single day. The relationships built, the curiosity sparked, the foundations laid for how small people will eventually experience the world. It is skilled, meaningful, deeply human work — and yet the sector that delivers it is facing a workforce challenge that shows no sign of resolving itself without deliberate, sustained action.

For centre leaders and directors, the question is no longer whether this is a problem worth taking seriously. It clearly is. The more useful question — and the one this article is designed to help answer — is what can actually be done about it.

Why Educators Leave

What centre leaders can influence is the day-to-day experience of working in their service. And according to recent research, that experience matters far more than most people realise.

Recent analysis by the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), drawing on data from more than 5,600 ECEC teachers, educators and leaders, found that background demographics showed little consistent link to whether educators wanted to stay — but their workplace experiences did. Four factors stood out: feeling valued, leadership quality, wellbeing support, and a sense that the broader community respected the work educators do.

These findings reframe the retention conversation in an important way. Retention is not primarily a recruitment problem. It is a culture and leadership problem — and that means it is something centre leaders are genuinely positioned to address.

What Meaningful Support Actually Looks Like

When we talk about supporting educators, it is easy to default to the most visible interventions — staffing ratios, qualification funding, wage supplements. These things matter. But they are the floor, not the ceiling.

The AERO research found that educators who felt genuinely valued and appreciated were more than three times as likely to remain in their current position compared to those who felt poorly valued. Feeling valued is relational. It is built through consistent, daily actions: being listened to in team meetings, having professional opinions respected, receiving genuine acknowledgement for work that is often invisible to families and the broader public.

Meaningful support also looks like investing in professional development — not as a compliance exercise, but as a genuine signal that the organisation sees a future for its people.

The Role of Leadership

Of all the factors influencing whether an educator stays, leadership quality emerged as one of the most significant. Educators who rated the leadership quality at their service as very good were three times as likely to remain in their current job for three years or more compared to those who rated it very poor.

What is particularly encouraging is that even modest improvements made a measurable difference — the shift from poor to moderate leadership perception was enough to increase retention likelihood. The bar for meaningful change is not as high as it might feel.

Strong leadership in an ECEC context means clarity, consistency and genuine investment in the people on the floor. Leaders who are visible, present and engaged with the daily realities of their educators’ work create services where people want to stay.

Flexibility, Wellbeing and the Whole Person

Within the structural constraints of the sector, there is still meaningful room to move. Flexible rostering, predictable scheduling and a culture that doesn’t routinely expect educators to absorb unreasonable demands in silence — these things matter deeply to a workforce that is physically and emotionally demanding by its very nature.

The AERO research found that wellbeing support had a significant influence on educators’ desire to remain in the sector, with those very satisfied with the wellbeing support provided by their service being notably more likely to stay in both their role and the sector. Only educators satisfied with wellbeing support were likely to recommend a career in ECEC to others — meaning wellbeing is not just a retention lever, it is a recruitment lever too.

In practice this might look like structured team debriefs after challenging days, manageable workloads, access to an Employee Assistance Program, and leadership that monitors and responds to signs of burnout before they become exit conversations.

Community Respect and Professional Pride

One finding from the AERO research that deserves particular attention is the role of community respect. Educators who felt the ECEC sector was well-respected were significantly more likely to stay in their roles and were five times more likely to recommend the profession to others compared to those who didn’t feel that sense of respect.

Centre leaders cannot single-handedly change how Australian society values early childhood education. What they can do is build professional pride within their own walls — treating educators as the skilled professionals they are, creating genuine opportunities for them to lead pedagogical conversations, and celebrating qualifications and career milestones. These things matter, even when the broader cultural signals are mixed.

How a Recruitment Partner Can Support Long-Term Retention

Retention begins at recruitment. The fit between an educator and a service — in values, pedagogical approach and working culture — is one of the strongest predictors of whether a placement will endure. A rushed hire driven purely by urgency often resolves a short-term staffing problem while creating a medium-term turnover problem.

Working with a specialist early childhood recruitment partner means access to a deeper candidate network, consultants who genuinely understand the sector, and workforce planning support that helps you think ahead rather than only respond to vacancies. That kind of partnership is most valuable not when you are in crisis, but before you get there.

A Final Word for Centre Leaders

What the research tells us — and what we see reflected in the services genuinely winning on retention — is that the most powerful levers are not always the most expensive or structurally complex. They are relational. Cultural. Leadership-driven.

Educators who feel valued, supported, well-led and respected stay. They advocate for the profession and help build the kind of stable, experienced teams that deliver genuinely high-quality care.

If you would like to talk about how Entrée Early Years can support your service’s workforce strategy — whether you have immediate vacancies or are thinking further ahead — we would love to hear from you.

Contact our team here.