Employment Incentives for Early Childhood Educators
In November 2009, the Victorian Government released an early childhood workforce strategy Improving Victoria’s Early Childhood Workforce.
The strategy includes a range of initiatives to respond to the growing demand for qualified early childhood professionals. One of the key initiatives announced as part of this strategy is Employment Incentives for Early Childhood Educators, which will enable licensed children’s services to advertise the availability of a financial incentive to attract early childhood teachers and Diploma‑qualified staff to take up work in hard-to-staff positions.
See: Improving Victoria’s Early Childhood Workforce (PDF - 2.5Mb)
What's available?
Employment Incentives for Early Childhood Educators will provide a financial incentive of up to $12,000 to early childhood teachers and up to $6000 for Diploma-qualified staff to take up work in hard-to-staff positions.
Making an application
Applications are invited from licensed children’s services that have a vacancy for an early childhood teacher or a Diploma-qualified early childhood educator.
The Department will offer an incentive for early childhood teacher vacancies if the vacancy is an ongoing position and:
- the service is a long day care centre that does not currently have a funded kindergarten program or
- the service is in receipt of rural or small rural kindergarten funding or
- the service is an Aboriginal early childhood service or
- the service is located in a hard-to-staff location or
- the position has been vacant for an extended period of time.
* Hard-to-staff locations have been defined using data from the Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) and the ABS Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). For a list of eligible areas, see: Hard to Staff Locations (PDF - 610Kb)
The Department will offer an incentive for Diploma-qualified vacancies if the vacancy is an ongoing position and:
- the service is an Aboriginal early childhood service or
- the position has been vacant for an extended period of time.
Individual applications will be accepted from licensed children’s services for vacancies outside the eligibility criteria (including fixed‑term vacancies). Services must be able to provide evidence that the vacancy should be classed as hard-to-staff.
The following documents are required to apply:
If the application is successful, the licensed children’s service will be able to advertise the employment incentive as part of the employment package for the hard-to-staff position.
When the licensed children’s service has made an appointment to the hard-to-staff position, the appointee will be required to complete an application form.
More information
For more information, contact the Early Childhood Strategy Division.
Phone: 1300 651 662
Email: early.years.workforce@edumail.vic.gov.au