Four people on King Island are among those taking up a Tasmanian scholarship aimed at getting more qualified educators into childcare centres.
The $4.5 million Early Years Workforce Development Scholarships offer extra support to people willing to move to remote or hard-to-staff areas, including King Island, Flinders Island and the West Coast.
Skills and Jobs Minister Felix Ellis said the program was delivering training support to grow the workforce where it was needed.
Tasmania is projected to need an additional 1,200 education and care educators and teachers by 2029.
Early Childhood Australia, which is delivering the program, says the training pathway itself is a hurdle for many people already working in centres.
Workforce initiatives manager Hannah Kench said some recipients had taken on a Certificate III and found the study harder than they expected.
“This scholarship means that they’ve got someone walking alongside them throughout that learning journey,” she said.
Kench said the wraparound support was the critical part of the program.
Recipients also receive financial help, along with laptops and, where there is a barrier to study, assistive technology.
She said the strongest result was the number of people moving into diplomas and teaching degrees.
Diploma-qualified staff can allow centres to lift their licensed capacity and take on more children.
Kench, who has worked in the sector for about 25 years, did not finish her own Certificate III when she started out because working and studying at the same time was too hard.
She left for a teaching degree and a job in schools before returning to early childhood education.
Josie Adams is 10 months into her first childcare job and studying her Certificate III in Devonport.
She said the course was long and would be tough to manage without the laptop the scholarship paid for.
The support also meant she could focus on the children rather than the cost, she said.
“I adore this job. It’s very, very fulfilling,” she said.
Of the 93 offers accepted, 73 are formal and 20 conditional. The four-year target is 200 people.
The next round is expected to open late this year.
