Thousands of aspiring early childhood teachers and educators will help to deliver Victoria’s $14 billion Best Start Best Life reforms – including Three-Year-Old Kindergarten and Pre-Prep over the coming years.
To support the workforce, the Victorian Government has expanded the suite of scholarships, incentives, educator traineeships and career advancement programs and supports.
We’re investing almost $370 million to attract high-quality early childhood teachers and educators to the sector and support and upskill existing professionals, to help children get the best start in life.
The funding includes:
- upskilling 780 diploma-qualified educators to become degree-qualified teachers
- delivering better placement and mentoring experiences for 550 students
- enabling up to 200 trainees to undertake a paid traineeship in an early childhood service while completing a relevant Certificate III qualification.
Immediate support is already available to help early childhood services recruit qualified teachers and educators. This includes:
- financial incentives of up to $50,000 to encourage professionals to move to hard-to-staff locations
- targeted recruitment agency support to attract quality candidates
- incentives of $9,000 to join or re-join the Victorian early childhood workforce for eligible professionals.
To support workforce development and retention, early childhood professionals have access to a range of free career development opportunities. These include:
- conferences for first-year teachers
- communities of practice for second- and third-year teachers
- coaching and mentoring support for provisionally registered teachers and experienced teachers and educators returning to the sector
- Early Years Learning Networks for teachers in leadership roles to share professional expertise.
Experienced teachers and educators can also develop their coaching and mentoring skills through a new professional learning program.
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