Is early childhood education training being delivered too quickly?

It’s no surprise that the early childhood education sector and the way it is supported by industry trainers was recently termed “critical”.

The Australian population is growing at an astonishing rate. One only has to look at the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics’ population clock – with a birth occurring in the country every one minute and 45 seconds, and a death every three minutes and 25 seconds, we’re booming.

It puts pressure on early childhood education, where a constant supply of well-trained professionals are needed to look after the growing population of pre-schoolers. In turn, this puts an emphasis on the right trainers making it into the right training industry jobs.

Training in early childhood education is needed to cope with huge population growth.

The Australian Skills Quality Authority’s (ASQA) recently looked into how the sector is tracking in its ‘Training for early childhood education and care in Australia’ report. As the national regulator for Australia’s vocational education and training sector, the ASQA called training “critical” for both the community and the economy.

However, to cope with the expanding need for child-care workers across the country, some level III certificates are being accelerated, leading to learners spending less time studying before attaining their qualifications.

Training completed too quickly?

More than 70 per cent of all Certificate III in Child Care qualifications were started and completed within 12 months, while guidelines recommend learners receive programs of a one- to two-year duration, the report showed.

The benchmark for certificate qualifications show a delivery period of at least 1,200 hours, although three-quarters of Certificate III in Child Care programs were only 750 hours in duration, or even less. The ASQA said the same thing can be seen in aged and community care qualifications, where 20 per cent of programs were completed within 26 weeks.

“Training courses are often being delivered in too short a time to enable the development of sufficient skills and knowledge and for valid assessment decisions to be made,” read one of the report’s key findings.

As a results, “most” registered training organisations are finding it difficult complying with assessment requirements, the ASQA said.

It leaves a lot of room for improvement. When we consider that the result of such training related to the level of care provided to our children, it isn’t difficult to see how training quality levels fall into this “critical” category.

If you are looking for experienced trainers to help improve training delivery and quality, the Edutemps team is here to help. Contact us today on 1300 880 720 or online for a range of training industry recruitment tips, advice and services.