Co-Educators: Undervalued and Under Utilised?

A Shallow Puddle, or a Pathway?

In Victorian sessional kindergarten, co-educators are essential. They are often the first to greet families, the ones resetting the room, the steady presence across years of staff turnover. Their work keeps the program running, not as assistants, but as professionals in their own right. So why do their career paths so often feel like a shallow puddle? Why is the message, spoken or implied, so often: 'If you want a real future in early childhood, go get a teaching degree’?

Valuing All Educators, But Do We Really?

We hear the phrase “all educators are valued” often in strategic plans, government reports, even position descriptions. But there’s a difference between being valued and being invested in. Drawing on Victoria’s Early Childhood Workforce Retention Guide (2024), the strategies promoted to retain staff, like clear role expectations, effective leadership, and career pathways, often overlook the unique structural limitations faced by co-educators:

• Where are the funded development pathways for diploma-qualified staff who don't want to become teachers?

• Why is planning time for co-educators still an exception rather than the norm?

• And why are so many co-educators doing program-critical work without the time, title, or pay to match?

Structural Inequity Is Not Just a Feeling, It's Policy

In our recent blog post, we noted that workforce retention efforts tend to centre teachers. While the Workforce Retention Guide outlines helpful service-level strategies, there is little attention given to the career stagnation experienced by co-educators who do not wish to pursue university pathways. Their choices are binary:
1. Study more (and often work unpaid while doing so)
or
2. Stay where you are, with few prospects for growth or change

This is not valuing diversity of contribution. It’s enforcing a single pathway to recognition and for many, it’s simply inaccessible.

Let’s Talk About What Growth Could Look Like

Co-educators should not need to “step up” into teaching to be seen as leaders or skilled professionals. We could imagine a future where:

• Services have co-educator leadership roles, such as mentor co-educators or practice champions

• Co-educators access paid planning time and participate in collaborative program design

• Professional learning is designed for, not just adapted to, co-educators

• Long-serving diploma-qualified educators are seen as keepers of knowledge, not stuck in static roles

These are not radical ideas. They are overdue.

We Can’t Retain a Workforce We Don’t Develop

The Workforce Retention Guide rightly identifies leadership, culture, and role clarity as key to staff wellbeing. But we must extend these pillars to all roles, not just teachers.

Co-educators deserve:

• Defined, professional role expectations

• Clear career pathways that don’t require a bachelor’s degree

• Leadership that sees and supports their contribution

• Time to think, plan, and grow professionally

Until then, we are building our sector’s future on the back of underpaid, under recognised labour. And the cost? It’s not just turnover. It’s the quiet exit of knowledge, stability, and care.

What Needs to Shift?

This is an invitation, to leaders, providers, and policy makers, to ask:

• What assumptions do we hold about what makes someone a professional?

• How are we using our funding, leadership, and structures to genuinely invest in co-educators?

• Are we offering careers or just jobs?

Because we can’t afford to keep losing the people who make this work possible.