The wages paid to childcare workers are the biggest barrier to overcoming a critical shortage of staff that is forcing some centres to turn away families, according to industry experts.
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At some levels childcare workers are paid less than supermarket employees despite having the responsibility of educating their young charges - which makes it difficult to recruit in an economy of almost full employment..
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Many Ballarat childcare centres are struggling to recruit educators, with some job ads not receiving a single applicant, despite surging demand from families for care.
Brady Bunch Early Learning Centres is about to open its third centre in the Sebastopol-Delacombe area and Rachel Condon said despite paying above award wages it was hard to find staff.
"At the moment we've got ads up and there's no applications ... but it's not just us it's every single service," she said.
The group has been recruiting over recent months and placing new staff in its two existing centres to be ready to transfer to the new facility when it opens in the coming weeks.
Ms Condon said she felt very fortunate to recruit the staff she has.
"We hire staff for the new centre and place them in the other services so when we do open up the new centre, we put staff over there and will be ok. Right now we are lucky that if we are short (of staff) somewhere we have capacity to move staff in."
Staff from Ballarat have even been travelling to Brady Bunch's Bendigo early learning centre to help fill staffing shortages, but that excess capacity will evaporate once the new Sebastopol centre opens.
"I have heard of centres having to knock back families because of lack of staff but we've been very fortunate not to," she said.
Early childhood educators will receive a 5.75 per cent pay rise in July but Ms Condon said that would be unlikely to help solve the shortage.
There's research you can't jump over that says the most influential years for a child's learning is zero to five. Education doesn't start in prep, it starts at birth and the vital part is us in childcare yet the wages don't reflect that
- Richard Nash
A national report from the Australian Childcare Alliance, released this week, found two thirds of centres surveyed in February had been forced to cap places to meet the legal ratio requirements of educators to children. A follow up survey in May revealed again that more than half had to cap enrolments due to the ongoing workforce shortages.
ACA president Paul Mondo said the shortage of qualified early childhood educators and teachers was the single most pressing issue facing Australia's early learning sector.
"Right now, we urgently need at least 10,000 well-trained, competent early childhood educators and teachers to fill vacancies," Mr Mondo said. "We simply do not have enough people to meet the demand for early learning and care, whilst also remaining compliant with the educator-ratios put in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children and staff alike."
Federation TAFE childcare teacher Richard Nash said the sector was a victim of very low unemployment, and its own success.
"There's childcare centres opening at a rate of knots," he said.
"But some childcare workers are paid less than people on the checkout of a supermarket. The elephant in the room is that childcare staff don't get paid enough for their level of responsibility.
"Everyone who wants a job has got a job and attracting people out of a supermarket or other job ... to be a childcare worker they're probably going to take a cut to their pay for the extra responsibility."
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Mr Nash said free TAFE courses in childcare were taking away the barrier of finance for students, but in many cases as soon as students went on placement they were being offered jobs and paid traineeships.
He said proper pay for early childhood educators was key to overcoming the skill shortage in the industry.
"Childcare gets a run when it's parents disadvantaged because they can't get their children in, but it's never about attracting quality staff without paying appropriately for the education our young children get from our educators," he said.
"It's not up to parents to pay more, it's up to government to fund the places appropriately. There's research you can't jump over that says the most influential years for a child's learning is zero to five. Education doesn't start in prep, it starts at birth and the vital part is us in child care yet the wages don't reflect that."
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