East Asia and Pacific

Early childhood workforce sustainability is an important issue, with implications for children, families and national productivity, as well as for educators themselves. Yet, in many national contexts, workforce challenges continue to undermine efforts to support sustainability.

In this article, we evaluate efforts to address early childhood workforce challenges in the Australian context, where extensive early childhood reforms are underway. We argue that attempts to address workforce challenges in current policy initiatives are limited and may be insufficient for sustaining the early childhood workforce in the long term. Given the critical role that the early childhood workforce plays in Australia’s early childhood reform agenda, we then consider how workforce sustainability could be rethought and other possibilities generated for addressing entrenched workforce challenges. We conclude by arguing that greater attention to the everyday politics of educators’ practice, along with the forces shaping these milieux, may be a way of generating new possibilities for supporting workforce sustainability.

This research overviewed the present situation of Korean early childhood education and care workforce's certification, education and training, and working conditions, according to the elements to assure the quality of teachers. Results show that structure and condition of the initial teacher training system, certificating system, professional development system and working environment and treatment of kindergarten teachers were slightly better than child care center teachers', and national/public kindergarten teachers' were better than private kindergarten teachers'. The hidden issues behind it such as marginalization, traditional child care discourse and the underestimation of caring were pointed out, which must be considered in addition to the elements related to teachers' quality that appear on the surface, when the integration plan of kindergarten and child care center teachers is discussed.

Child Care Staff: Learning and Growing Through Professional Development offers insights and shares innovative practices about the current professional development and support activities currently offered to the Australian early childhood workforce.

Drawing on the views and experience of 684 child care service directors/managers/owner-operators and staff across Australia, this publication aims to answer questions about how professional development impacts children’s outcomes and the measures of effective support services.

ECEC professionals’ qualifications and working conditions are inseparably linked to the quality of education and care children receive. This series of reports present why do workforce qualifications, education, training and working conditions matter for better child development. Each of the reports also describe where each of the respective countries (Slovak Republic, Japan and Finland) stand compared to other countries in terms of workforce qualifications, training and working conditions, what are the challenges they face and what strategies have been employed in order to address those challenges.

Early Years Workforce Strategy is the early childhood education and care workforce strategy for Australia from 2012 through 2016. It sets out a vision agreed upon by Australian governments, which aims to build and support the early childhood education and care profession. The strategy aims to guide governments, as well as the sector as a whole, to: deliver a sustainable, highly qualified and professional workforce; foster a flexible and responsive workforce capable of identifying and delivering services in response to the needs of children and families; and support ECEC staff to work in a more integrated way with the broader early childhood development (ECD) workforce including the range of professionals that work with children and their families across health and family services. The following five priority areas have been identified as essential components of achieving a sustainable and highly qualified ECEC workforce: 1) a professional workforce; 2) a growing workforce; 3) a qualified workforce; 4) a responsive workforce; and 5) a collaborative workforce.

The strategy which builds on 2009’s Investing in the Early Years –A National Early Childhood Development Strategy, reflects a commitment by governments to address the immediate priorities for the ECEC workforce, and at the same time working towards a long-term broader strategy for the workforce with a focus on supporting more integrated ways of working across the ECD sector.

Commissioned By:
Standing Council on School Education and Early Childhood

2012

SEAMEO INNOTECH has prioritized Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) in Southeast Asia as one of its programmatic areas to support universalization of ECCD in the region. As part of its research agenda, the Center has completed an investigation of the ECCD quality assurancepolicies, mechanisms and models being implemented by SEAMEO member countries. Out of the 11 SEAMEO member countries, ten participated in the study. Data collected from these countries were analyzed to generate a regional ECCD quality assurance profile. SEAMEO INNOTECH is now pleased to share these findings in this latest publication.

The current publication discusses the current and depth of these ECCD policies, mechanisms and models as well as issues and challenges that still need to be addressed by SEAMEO member countries.

One major finding of the study shows that although there are ECCD policies and standards already in place in most SEAMEO member states, there is an absence of explicit ECCD quality assurance frameworks that could serve as an anchor for a holistic ECCD program. Because of this absence, most ECCD policies and standards in Southeast Asia are limited to qualifications of pre-school heads and teachers, early learning curricula, and requirements of physical facilities.

It is hoped that this publication will support SEAMEO member countries in their efforts to act on strengthening their ECCD policies and standards and formulating a comprehensive and holistic ECCD quality assurance framework that would consider the varied needs of pre-school children.

Southeast Asian Guidelines for Early Childhood Teacher Development and Management focuses on recommendations based on both regional and international experiences concerning how to best manage and further enhance the quality of early childhood teachers in terms of the following aspects:

• recruitment to the profession,
• pre-service education,
• certification, deployment,
• continuing professional assessment and development,
• career progression, and
• working conditions and environments.
• These guidelines aim to aid relevant ministries and agencies in the professionalization of early childhood teachers and the promotion of better working conditions.​

SEAMEO

2016

Achieving Excellence through Continuing Professional Development: A CPD Framework for Early Childhood Educators provides child care personnel with a structured pathway to develop, update and specialize in knowledge and skills relevant to their profession. It is designed to help child care personnel continue to deliver high quality programs and services to children and families.

The purpose of this review is to:

• review the progress of the ECEC sector towards meeting the qualification requirements of the NQF that came into effect from 1 January 2014, particularly in relation to Early Childhood Teachers (ECTs) and rural and remote workforces
• identify areas which require further attention so additional support can be provided.

According to the report, although progress has been achieved, there are still challenged, across seven themes, that need to be addressed in order to further improve the ability of the sector to meet the NQF qualification requirements. Those challenges evolve around the following topics: 1) challenges in gaining qualifications: New entrants to the ECEC sector; 2) challenges in gaining qualifications: Up-skilling the existing workforce; 3) workforce challenges for ECEC services (including attracting and retaining staff); and 4) challenges for interpretation and application of NQF qualification requirements.