by Martel Menz, Manager Strategic Policy, The Front Project
We have long known what children need to thrive in early learning. Not just a place. Not just a program. But relationships. Stable, responsive educators who are there, day after day.
And those stable relationships are not guaranteed. They are shaped by government funding and policy settings, by regulations and quality standards, and by how providers choose to allocate funding, deliver programs and employ staff.
Relationships are either nurtured or undermined by the conditions and culture in which educators work. When those conditions fall short, the impact is immediate. It affects the quality of learning, the safety of environments, the morale of staff and the outcomes children experience.
Our recent investigation on these issues, Staying Power: the case for educator stability, brings this into sharp focus. It pulls together workforce data, service-level insight and quality indicators to show what the sector has long known through experience: stability is not peripheral to quality, it is foundational to it. And importantly, it shows just how far the current system is from delivering that stability.
A system characterised by instability
Our analysis of publicly available workforce and quality data paints a clear picture of a sector under strain.
Rates of attrition in early childhood education and care significantly exceed those in the broader workforce, with annual turnover typically sitting between 17 and 32 per cent, compared to 12 to 20 per cent across the Australian workforce. In practice, this means more than a third of educators are leaving services each year. Turnover is not an isolated event. It is a constant feature of the system.
And when educators leave, those gaps do not disappear. They must be filled. In a context where qualified staff are difficult to recruit, this often means relying on a rotating pool of casual educators. In long daycare, more than one in four educators are employed on a casual basis, compared to fewer than one in five workers across the broader labour market, and less than one in ten preschool teachers.
Some level of casual employment is both necessary and valued. It provides flexibility for services and for educators. But when casualisation is relied upon, it signals deeper instability.
At the same time, the workforce itself is increasingly early career. More than half of educators working in long daycare have six years of experience or less, and fewer than one in three have been in the sector for more than a decade. Tenure within services is even shorter. Around seven in ten educators have been at their current centre for three years or less, pointing to a system where continuity is the exception rather than the norm.
This instability is compounded by persistent vacancies and staffing gaps. Nearly 60 per cent of services report at least one vacant position, and many are operating below minimum staffing levels on a weekly, and in some cases daily, basis.
Taken together, this is not a picture of a system experiencing occasional pressure. It is a system in which instability has become embedded.
Pay, conditions and culture are shaping stability
Instability is not a coincidence. It is being produced by the conditions in which educators work. Recent initiatives, including the Worker Retention Payment, are an important step in addressing pay. But they do not yet address the full set of pressures shaping educators’ experience. High workload, insufficient non-contact time, and unsupportive workplace cultures continue to define the day-to-day reality of the workforce, and in turn, whether educators stay or leave.
These pressures are clearly reflected in the Macquarie University Pay and Conditions research commissioned by government and recently released for sector consideration. More than 40 per cent of educators say they are likely to leave within two years. Workload, limited non-contact time and broader employment conditions sit alongside pay as key drivers. Diploma-qualified educators are particularly at risk, especially those on award-level wages with limited access to planning time and professional development. This is significant, as diploma-qualified educators are often leading rooms in long daycare services, carrying responsibility for curriculum, supervision and team coordination. Instability in this part of the workforce therefore has direct implications for the consistency, leadership and quality of practice experienced by children.
Our analysis reinforces this at the service level. Services rated as Exceeding are far more likely to employ educators under enterprise agreements that provide above-award pay, dedicated planning time and access to professional learning. Of the services rated Exceeding in 2025, 63% employ staff under a registered multi-employer or enterprise agreement.
These same services perform more strongly in the areas that matter most: staffing, relationships and leadership.
By contrast, services rated Working Towards are more likely to rely on award-level pay and individual arrangements, with fewer of these stabilising supports in place. Among centres rated Working Towards in 2025, 83 per cent relied on award-level or individual contractual arrangements for their workforce. These services are also more likely to struggle across staffing, relationships, governance, and children’s health and safety.
Workforce conditions and quality challenges are not separate issues. They show up together. Where conditions are weaker, instability is higher and quality is harder to sustain. Where conditions are stronger, services are better able to maintain continuity, build relationships and support consistent practice.
What follows is a reinforcing cycle. Educators leave, increasing pressure on those who remain. As pressure builds, so too does dissatisfaction and burnout. More educators leave. Stability erodes. And with it, the conditions children rely on to feel safe, known and ready to learn.
Why stability is central to quality
At its core, early learning is relational. Children learn through sustained interactions with adults who know them well, and who have the time, support and capacity to be present and responsive each day.
Where educator teams are stable, services are better able to provide consistent, responsive and intentional learning environments. Educators develop deeper knowledge of each child. Relationships with families are stronger. Practice becomes more coherent and sustained, with teams able to align their approaches, reflect on what works, and continuously improve.
Where instability is high, the opposite occurs. Relationships are disrupted. Time is diverted from teaching to managing gaps. Parent trust is eroded. The conditions required for quality are undermined. At its worst, this instability creates the conditions in which unsafe practices and increased risks to children can emerge.
This is why workforce stability needs to be understood as a protective factor for children.
What this means for children
The implications for children are immediate and significant.
The government’s First Five Years study makes clear that early learning environments play a critical role in shaping developmental outcomes. Participation in high-quality early childhood education is associated with lower rates of developmental vulnerability and stronger outcomes over time.
The Staying Power analysis helps explain what sits beneath that quality. Services that are rated as Exceeding are those that have made deliberate choices about how they staff and support their teams, creating the conditions for stable relationships, consistent interactions and coherent practice. These are the environments in which children are more likely to be thriving.
When those relationships are disrupted, the benefits of early learning are weakened. When stability is present, those benefits are strengthened. This is particularly important for children experiencing disadvantage, who stand to gain the most from consistent, high-quality early learning environments.
The sector has been telling us this for a long time
None of this should surprise educators or providers. The importance of stability, of relationships, and of conditions that support quality has been a consistent message from many in the sector for years.
What is different now is the strength and alignment of the evidence.
The Staying Power analysis brings together what has often been understood in isolation across workforce data, quality ratings, surveys and service-level insights, and makes it visible as a system issue. It shows that instability is not isolated, and that its consequences are significant.
This is reinforced across major national research. The Macquarie University report identifies a skilled, healthy and stable workforce as essential to delivering high-quality early childhood education and care, and links workforce stability directly to improved outcomes for children and families. The First Five Years study similarly shows that children who attend higher-quality early learning environments are less likely to experience developmental vulnerability across multiple domains.
Taken together, the picture is clear. Educator stability, workforce conditions, and child outcomes are deeply connected.
Time to act
The question is no longer whether stability matters. It is whether the system is prepared to prioritise it.
This requires a strong policy response.
Workforce stability must be treated as a core condition of quality, embedded in funding, regulation and system design. That means investing not only in wages, but in the conditions that enable educators to stay. It also means setting clear expectations for providers, alongside the funding and support needed to deliver these conditions in practice, and strengthening how governments monitor and respond to workforce stability across the system. Better use of existing data, including workforce census and service-level information, can provide clearer visibility of where instability is highest and where action is most needed.
Recognising stability as central to quality means addressing the conditions that drive attrition, not just responding to the symptoms of shortage. It means designing policy and funding settings that support continuity, rather than accepting churn as inevitable.
Without stability, the promise of quality universal early childhood education cannot be fully realised. With it, we have an opportunity to strengthen outcomes for children, families and communities in a way that is both evidence-based and long overdue.
The evidence is consistent and clear. High-quality early learning improves outcomes for children. High-quality early learning depends on stable, skilled educators. Stability is not optional, it is foundational.
And for children, this plays out in their everyday experience — whether they are greeted by familiar educators, feel safe and secure, and are supported to build the relationships that underpin healthy development and learning.
What happens next will determine whether the system can deliver the relationships children rely on.
This article was also published in The Sector.
Read Staying Power.