Shaping Our Future Children’s Education and Care National Workforce Strategy

High quality children’s education and care sets the foundations for lifelong learning and development. Education Ministers recognise the critical importance of the children’s education and care sector, as well as the dedication and resilience of its workforce throughout the COVID-19 global pandemic.

The National Children’s Education and Care Workforce Strategy (2022-2031) has been developed to support the recruitment, retention, sustainability and quality of the sector workforce. Facilitated by ACECQA, national sector stakeholders and all Australian governments have closely collaborated to co-design ‘Shaping Our Future’, a ten-year workforce strategy to help ensure a sustainable, high-quality children’s education and care workforce.

‘Shaping Our Future’ acknowledges and builds on the significant investment by all governments to date in workforce related initiatives, as well as a range of recent and ongoing initiatives launched by the sector. It provides a roadmap for ongoing collaboration and partnership between all parties, including governments, service providers, education and training providers, peak associations, regulatory bodies, and educators and teachers, and their representative bodies.

The ten-year timeframe for the strategy recognises the complexity of the workforce challenges faced by the sector and provides a call to action for all stakeholders to work towards ambitious goals.

Implementing the strategy is a collective responsibility between all stakeholders. With the release of the Strategy, work will now commence with all governments and sector stakeholders to co-design implementation and evaluation plans to guide collaborative efforts to achieve the strategy’s objectives.

The strategy is intended to be a living document. Regular monitoring will ensure it can adapt and respond to emerging workforce challenges over the ten-year period.