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Building our workforce through Early Childhood Tertiary Partnerships

See how we’re attracting early childhood educators and teachers to the profession.

Building our workforce through Early Childhood Tertiary Partnerships

Some information on this webpage is out of date following the 2024/2025 budget. In the short term, please refer to The Best Start, Best Life reforms.

Education pathways into the early childhood workforce have been bolstered to attract the thousands of new staff needed to roll out the Best Start, Best Life reforms.

With more than 11,000 new early childhood educators and teachers needed for the reforms, the department has launched the new Early Childhood Tertiary Partnerships (ECTP) program.

The program will improve educator and teacher supply by attracting new professionals into the early childhood workforce.

Early Childhood Tertiary Partnerships program

The ECTP program is an expansion of the Early Childhood Innovative Initial Teacher Education program. The expansion will enable more tertiary education providers – including universities, dual sector providers, TAFEs and Registered Training Organisations – to offer students increased support and deliver high-quality, work-ready early childhood educator and teacher graduates.

The program supports students into 4 levels of early childhood education qualifications – certificate III, diploma, bachelor and graduate diploma courses.

The programs are aimed at attracting more people to the sector, including:

  • people who are new to the workforce
  • those returning to the workforce
  • people from a culturally and linguistically diverse background
  • people who may be interested in a career change.

What’s on offer?

The first round of available programs includes teacher programs from Federation University, Monash University and Swinburne University.

Also on offer are educator programs from Chisholm Institute, Gowrie Victoria, VICSEG New Futures, Victoria University Polytechnic and Wodonga Institute of TAFE.

Check out our website for more information on each of the available programs, with information on further programs set to be available soon.

We invite you to share this link with your networks.

Find out more

For more information, refer to Early Childhood Tertiary Partnerships.

For further enquiries, contact the Workforce Policy and Programs Division by email: early.childhood.iite@education.vic.gov.au

Updated