33 Children in a Kinder Room: When Expanding Access Outpaces Quality
Tammy Lawlor
VSKEA Founder
In Victoria, the rollout of free kindergarten has been widely celebrated for improving access for families. Increasing participation in early childhood education is an important goal, and one that the sector broadly supports. However, as enrolments have expanded, many educators are seeing changes inside kindergarten rooms that deserve closer attention.
Across sessional kindergarten services, group sizes have gradually increased, from around 27 children per session to as many as 33 in some programs (45+ if we include rotational models). While services may continue to meet regulatory staffing ratios, the practical realities of supervising and teaching larger groups are changing the dynamics of early learning environments.
Larger cohorts affect everything from noise levels and transitions to children’s regulation, educator workload, and the ability to engage in intentional teaching. These experiences raise an important question for the sector: how do we expand access while protecting the conditions that make high-quality early childhood education possible?
This reflection explores the growing tension between policy ambition and classroom reality, and why workforce sustainability, group size, and resourcing must be part of the conversation about the future of kindergarten in Victoria.
The Shift in Group Sizes
Sessional kindergarten in Victoria has traditionally prioritised child-centred learning, intentional teaching, and strong educator-child relationships. Average group sizes of around 26 children allowed educators to create calm environments where play could be meaningfully scaffolded and children’s development closely observed.
The distinction between sessional kindergarten and long day care was also clearer: sessional kinder focused on education and developmental outcomes, while childcare services primarily provided care to support working families.
Since the introduction of free kindergarten, many services, particularly council-run and standalone centres, have experienced increased enrolments without corresponding increases in staffing or planning time. In my experience, some sessions now run with 33 children, and rotational enrolment models can mean up to 45 children moving through the same room across the week.
Although classrooms continue to operate with one teacher and two diploma-qualified educators, meeting statutory ratios, the learning environment has shifted in ways that ratios alone cannot capture.
The Classroom Environment Today
The impact of larger group sizes is visible in everyday practice. Rooms are louder and more crowded, transitions are more complex, and educators must maintain constant vigilance across a larger and more dynamic group of children. The cognitive load involved in supervising 33 children while also observing learning, documenting development, and communicating with families is significant. As a result, educators often find themselves working in a cycle of reactive management rather than intentional teaching. Time and attention are absorbed by supervising transitions, mediating conflicts, and responding to incidents rather than guiding play and extending learning.
Planning time has not increased to match the larger cohorts, which means that documentation, reflection, and curriculum design are often squeezed into already full workloads. What was once a reflective, pedagogically rich environment can begin to feel operational, focused on maintaining order rather than nurturing deep learning.
Strategies Educators Are Trying
Experienced educators are adapting creatively to these pressures.
Some common strategies include:
Small-group rotations to reduce the number of children in a space at one time
Quiet or low-stimulation zones where children can regulate away from busy areas
Staggered transitions to ease congestion at doors, bathrooms, and outdoor spaces
Intentional scheduling of play to balance high-energy and calm activities
These approaches can help stabilise the environment, but they cannot fully compensate for structural pressures created by larger group sizes and limited planning time. Many educators feel they are managing symptoms rather than addressing the underlying issue.
Early Warning Signs: Safety and Behaviour
One of the clearest indicators of environmental strain in early childhood settings is an increase in serious incidents. When group sizes grow and environments become busier, the complexity of supervision also increases.
Educators across the sector report that incidents are more likely to occur during high movement periods such as transitions, in crowded play spaces, or when children become overstimulated in noisy environments. These situations can lead to children briefly becoming unaccounted for, minor accidents in busy areas, or rough and dysregulated play. Families may also express concerns about supervision and safety when classrooms feel crowded or chaotic.
While services may technically meet regulatory staffing ratios, the practical demands of supervising larger groups can exceed what those ratios were originally designed to support. Group size, physical layout, noise levels, and the number of simultaneous interactions all contribute to the complexity educators must manage. When these pressures increase, a feedback loop can develop: environmental stress raises children’s dysregulation, which in turn increases the supervisory and emotional load on educators. Over time, this dynamic can affect both safety and the quality of learning experiences available to children.
Inclusion and Diverse Needs
Another important tension in the current system concerns how services support children with additional learning or behavioural needs. In school settings, children who require adjustments can access documented supports, modified timetables, and additional staffing where appropriate. In sessional kindergarten, however, access to similar supports is often limited. When children do not meet the criteria for targeted funding programs, they may be placed in full groups of up to 33 children without additional staffing or specialist support.
While the intention is to ensure equitable access to kindergarten programs, educators are often asked to deliver inclusive practice without the resources that meaningful inclusion requires. Without funded support workers, additional educators, or adequate planning time, the pressure on the learning environment can increase. Children who require additional support may struggle to access the program in ways that genuinely meet their needs, while educators must balance the needs of the entire group within already complex environments.
In these circumstances, inclusion risks becoming symbolic rather than substantive. Genuine inclusion is not simply about access to a place in the room, it requires adequate staffing, planning time, and support structures that enable every child to participate, regulate, and learn successfully.
Workforce Sustainability Challenges
Many sessional kindergarten educators are highly experienced and long-serving, with some staff working in the same service for more than a decade and leadership staff even longer. However, larger group sizes, increased cognitive load, and unchanged planning time are leading some educators to consider early retirement or transitioning into casual roles.
This trend is occurring within a broader workforce context:
The median age of Victorian kindergarten educators is over 50
Turnover is increasing in high-pressure environments
The Victorian Early Childhood Teachers and Educators Agreement (VECTEA) still remains unresolved at the time of publication
Leadership roles such as Educational Leader are often unpaid sideways promotions
Without meaningful improvements in pay, workload recognition, and leadership support, the sector risks losing a deep reservoir of professional knowledge and stability.
The Policy Tension
The expansion of free kindergarten is an important step for equity and participation. However, it highlights a key policy tension: expanding access without strengthening workforce and service capacity risks diluting educational quality.
This challenge will become even more significant with the proposed 30-hour four-year-old kindergarten model, which will increase demand for both educators and learning spaces. At the same time, the sector is approaching a potential retirement wave, with estimates suggesting that 50–70% of experienced staff may transition out of full-time roles over the next decade. Without targeted workforce planning, this combination of expanding access and shrinking experience could place substantial pressure on the system.
The Next Pressure Point: Pre-Prep Priority Cohorts
Another major shift on the horizon is the expansion of Pre-Prep for priority cohorts, which begun this year and will expand again in 2028. Under the Victorian rollout, children from priority groups will be eligible for 16-25 hours of Pre-Prep each week, increasing to up to 30 hours in later stages. Initially this includes children who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, children from refugee or asylum seeker backgrounds, children who have had contact with Child Protection, and children previously supported through Early Start Kindergarten or Access to Early Learning. From 2028, eligibility expands to include children from families with Commonwealth concession cards and multiple-birth families.
The policy goal is clear: children who may benefit most from additional early learning time should have access to it. Research consistently shows that high-quality early childhood education can significantly improve outcomes for children experiencing disadvantage. However, this expansion raises an important question for the sector: how will these additional hours be delivered in practice?
Many services are already managing larger groups, workforce shortages, and limited planning time. Expanding hours without proportionally increasing staffing, infrastructure, and planning capacity risks placing additional strain on systems that are already stretched. For children in priority cohorts, many of whom may require more individualised support, stronger relationships with educators, and carefully structured environments, quality matters even more. Simply increasing the number of hours children spend in a room does not automatically translate into better outcomes.
Without adequate funding for additional educators, specialist support, and program planning, there is a risk that expanded hours become supervisory rather than educational. What is intended as a policy to reduce disadvantage could, in practice, become an exercise in extending attendance time without ensuring the conditions required for learning. High quality early childhood education is not defined only by the number of hours offered. It depends on stable staffing, manageable group sizes, thoughtful program design, and sufficient resources to support children with diverse needs.
As Victoria moves toward a universal 30 hour Pre-Prep model by 2036, these questions about quality, workforce capacity, and resourcing will only become more urgent. If expanded access is not matched with sustained investment in the workforce and learning environment, the sector risks creating programs that look ambitious on paper but struggle to deliver the outcomes they promise.
Reflections for Educators and Policymakers
For educators, one lesson is clear: ratios are a baseline, not a guarantee of quality or safety. Group size, supervision complexity, environmental noise, and workload all interact to shape the learning environment.
Documenting these pressures, through incident reports, reflective practice, and professional dialogue, can help ensure that classroom realities are visible in broader policy discussions.
For policymakers, the current situation highlights several key considerations:
Expanding access without increasing staffing, planning time, or infrastructure risks undermining program quality
Workforce stability depends on fair pay, recognition, and professional support
Inclusion policies must be supported with practical resources, not simply expectations
Regulatory compliance may be achieved on paper, while environmental pressures continue to rise in practice
High-quality early childhood education requires attention not only to participation rates, but also to the conditions that enable effective teaching and learning.
Conclusion
Victoria’s investment in early childhood education represents an important commitment to improving outcomes for children and families. Expanding access through free kindergarten and the planned rollout of Pre-Prep reflects a recognition that early learning matters. However, the experience of many sessional kindergarten educators suggests that access and quality cannot be separated.
In many services, group sizes have increased from around 28 children to 33 per session, changing the dynamics of classrooms and increasing the complexity of supervision. At the same time, educators are managing greater administrative expectations, inclusion responsibilities, and family engagement without a corresponding increase in planning time or staffing support.
These pressures are occurring within a workforce that is highly experienced but also ageing, with many educators now in their 50s and 60s. Without improvements in pay, workload recognition, and professional support, the sector risks losing a significant proportion of its most experienced staff over the coming decade.
The upcoming expansion of Pre-Prep for priority cohorts and the longer-term move toward a 30-hour kindergarten model will place even greater demands on services. While these reforms aim to support children who benefit most from early education, they will only succeed if the system has the workforce, infrastructure, and funding required to deliver programs at the level of quality children deserve.
Early childhood education is not simply about the number of hours children attend. It is about the conditions that allow educators to build relationships, support regulation, scaffold play, and respond to individual needs. If policy ambition continues to expand faster than the system’s capacity to deliver high-quality programs, the sector risks shifting from environments designed for learning and development toward environments focused primarily on managing numbers and supervision.
Victoria has the opportunity to build one of the strongest early childhood systems in the world. But achieving that vision will require ensuring that workforce sustainability, manageable group sizes, and adequate resourcing grow alongside access. Without that balance, the very reforms designed to strengthen early learning may unintentionally weaken the quality that makes it so powerful.