Getting started in the early childhood sector

Location incentives are available for eligible early childhood teachers and educators who take up jobs at priority services across metropolitan and regional Victoria delivering funded kindergarten.

Individual incentives worth $9,000 are available for eligible early childhood teacher and educators working in a different sector or industry to take up a role in any service in Victoria delivering funded kindergarten.

This includes:

• qualified early childhood teachers and educators who have not yet worked in the Victorian sector or who have been working in another sector for the past 12 months, or
• dual-qualified teachers currently working in primary schools

You may also be eligible for a location incentive if you take up a role at a select service delivering funded kindergarten.

To register or re-register as a teacher, visit the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) Returning to teaching from non-practising webpage. You can also check if your qualification allows you to teach in Victoria on the ACECQA website.

Individual Incentives worth $9,000, plus relocation support, are available for eligible early childhood teachers or educators moving from another state, territory or from overseas.

You may also be eligible for a location incentive if you take up a role at a select service delivering funded kindergarten.

To teach in Victoria you must be registered with the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT). Check your qualification first on the ACECQA website. If you’re registered in another Australian state or territory, or overseas you can then apply to VIT for registration using the ‘Mutual Recognition’ pathway.

If you hold a qualification from outside Australia or New Zealand, and it is not already listed as approved on the ACECQA website, you can apply to ACECQA to have it assessed for equivalence.

Read more about early childhood careers in Victoria.

If you’re a new or provisionally registered early childhood teacher in your first five years of teaching, you will have access to:

• funding to support you to work with a mentor to become fully registered with VIT
• beginning teacher conferences to support your induction into the sector
• at least five hours of coaching in your first year of teaching, and ‘communities of practice’ to work through specific areas of skill development in your second and third year of teaching
• an alumni network to help you and other teachers who have completed these programs stay connected and share professional growth and expertise.

If you’re seeking to network and expand your leadership skills, you could take part in:

• the Effective Mentoring Program, to help you become a mentor, giving you skills to guide provisionally registered teachers to develop their teaching practice and become fully registered
• your local Early Years Learning Network, which brings together local early childhood teachers for collaborative learning and peer support. These facilitated networks are available to all teachers in funded kindergarten programs each term and enable you to develop new knowledge and deepen your understanding of emerging evidence based contemporary practice.

These new resources are designed to support your practice as you help to plan and deliver quality programs:

• The Three-Year-Old Kindergarten Teaching Toolkit helps services in their first year providing Three-Year-Old Kindergarten. The toolkit includes a range of educational resources and supports teams to deliver high-quality educational programs aligned to the VEYLDF and appropriate to the learning and development needs of three-year-olds.
• The Arc platform, which gives teachers and educators access to thousands of digital educational resources. These can also be used by young children and their families to learn at home.