NEXT FEW WEEKS BOOOOMMM!!! ... ＼⁠(⁠◎⁠o⁠◎⁠)⁠／, page-23

No problems. It's equally difficult for both. Services can pay a fee and apply for a waiver for a certain period of time if they cant meet any qualification requirements and can show evidence they are actively trying to recruit or train to meet it in the future. The governing body ACECQA track these waivers and release the data periodically. Its worth noting this data only reflects the services that actually apply. I have no doubt there are alot that don't bother and take the risk of avoiding being caught out. This is from the latest report:

As you can see from previous qualification/staffing ratio legislation changes, waivers spiked before normalising somewhat. However the last changes in 2020 together with COVID has seen them explode and sustain at those levels for a much longer period of time. One of the major changes in 2020 was requiring services to have 50% of their educators with atleast a Diploma qualification. They *could* roll that back, but the optics if that happened would not be good. The Government's initial response was to offer free training through TAFE and financial incentives for employers to take on trainees. Two problems here: The first is that obtaining qualifications take time, the completion rate is lower than many other industry's, its a very long term solution when the issue is at crisis point now. The second is it's not necessarily getting new people into early education that's the problem, it's the loss of the huge amount of experienced educators over the past few years. Good people have left the sector in droves because there are just so many better jobs out there for higher pay and way less responsibility. Better wages are the only way to keep our best people, and attract quality new talent in to the sector... literally the same for any business.

With regards to hours, schools operate 8:30am to 3:30pm or thereabouts and get about 12 weeks school holidays per year. A long day care is generally open for 10-12 hours per day and only closed 11-13 days per year for public holidays. There are even a number of childcare providers that have started operating on weekends, or overnight to cater for working parents that do night shifts. The paperwork thing is fairly off the mark too as there are many reports of services making educators take observation work home to complete after hours. I don't know if you've ever had kids in childcare yourself but there are usually a bunch of photos and stories being written about them by educators to send home every day they attend. Director's and teachers are writing transition reports for the school aged children heading off to school, writing detailed reports to health professionals for the every increasing number of children with additional needs. By no means is it as demanding as a school teachers documentation workload, but it is still extensive and increases year on year.