Experts find extra duties placed on educators put kids at risk

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Widespread wage theft and unsustainable workloads across the childcare sector have been revealed in a first of its kind Australian study. The research also found too many extra duties like cleaning and writing reports for parents are taking carers away from supervising children which is putting the safety of kids at risk.

Transcript

00:00Ying Jiao Ju has worked at 50 childcare centres over a decade.

00:06She says workers now have too much on their plates, lesson planning, report writing, cleaning

00:12up, even taking out the garbage.

00:14To be very honest, doing all of those things in a day and over the weeks, it's pretty hard.

00:23And that's before workers get to the most important task, caring for children.

00:27Sometimes the days are gone by so fast and so busy that educators sometimes even forget

00:33to, for example, drink water.

00:35An Australia first study of 570 workers has found educators have what's been described

00:41as an alarming number of duties, with more than 70 per cent working on average seven to

00:46nine unpaid hours every week and only able to spend two and a half quality hours a day

00:52with children.

00:53These are not just babysitters, they are qualified educators and degree qualified teachers.

00:59Educators are being exploited for the care that they have for the children that they're

01:04caring and educating.

01:05If things continue in the sector the way that they are, we are going to continue to

01:10see burnout.

01:11We are going to continue to see attrition in the sector.

01:15As governments grapple with a response to rising community concerns about the safety of

01:19children in childcare, this study has prompted calls for a stock take of all duties required

01:24of educators to make sure they have time for their most important task, keeping children

01:29safe.

01:30It's impacting educators, it's impacting children and it's certainly impacting quality

01:35and safety of care.

01:37The government described the findings as troubling and ministers from around the country will soon

01:41meet to discuss further reform.

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