The True Cost of Turnover in Early Learning: How to Retain Your Educators

Across Australia’s early learning sector, workforce stability is a growing concern, impacting service quality, regulatory compliance, and the broader viability of early education provision. Turnover among early childhood educators is not just an operational inconvenience. It is a structural issue with cascading effects on child development, team cohesion and educational outcomes.

At McArthur, with nearly four decades of experience recruiting for early learning services, we’ve observed that services with high staff retention consistently achieve stronger National Quality Standard (NQS) outcomes and higher family satisfaction. As staffing shortages intensify nationally, employers who approach workforce stability with long-term, strategic intent are best placed to thrive.

Understanding the True Cost of Educator Turnover

The financial cost of turnover is often underestimated. Beyond recruitment expenses, frequent staff changes carry deeper, less visible costs:

• Loss of continuity in educator-child relationships, which are foundational to secure attachments and early learning.
• Reduced compliance capacity, with constant pressure on ratios, staff qualifications, and programming consistency.
• Declining team cohesion, as new educators cycle through and place greater strain on permanent staff.
• Brand and reputation risks, with families sensitive to staff changes and turnover signals.

Estimates suggest that replacing an early childhood educator can cost up to 30% of the role’s annual salary, a figure that grows significantly when disruption to team dynamics and enrolments is considered.

Why Educators Leave: Key Drivers of Turnover 

Research continues to reinforce what educators and employers alike experience daily: low wages and poor conditions remain central to high turnover rates. According to The Spoke by Early Childhood Australia and research by First Five Years Fund, early childhood educators are among the lowest-paid qualified professionals in Australia. This low pay, combined with high emotional labour and limited career mobility, contributes to annual turnover rates exceeding 30% in some regions.

The 2021 ACECQA report Attracting and Retaining Early Childhood Educators highlights three consistent barriers to retention:

• Inadequate remuneration: many educators still feel underpaid and undervalued. Remuneration that doesn’t reflect their skill and emotional labour is a major driver of attrition.
• Limited career development pathways: Educators want progression. The absence of structured development and leadership opportunities often sends experienced staff looking elsewhere.
• Burnout and work-life imbalance: Heavy workloads, unpaid overtime and minimal flexibility lead to burnout. Without adequate wellbeing support, passionate educators are pushed out of the profession

These are not simply workforce complaints; they are risk indicators for service delivery quality and sustainability.

Retention Starts with Strategy: What Centre Leaders Can Do

Retention is not solved through recruitment alone. It requires a multi-layered, proactive workforce strategy. From our experience working with high-performing centres nationwide, the most effective leaders apply the following strategic levers:

Build a reliable and responsive casual pool

Burnout often stems from rigid staffing models. Services that embed flexible rostering, time-in-lieu structures, and practical non-contact time see marked improvements in staff satisfaction. Partnering with an experienced casual pool provider helps buffer planned and unplanned leave without overextending permanent staff.

Invest in culture, leadership and professional recognition

Educators stay where they feel seen and supported. Strong induction programs, mentoring systems, and regular team reflections build psychological safety and engagement. Recognising the professional identity of educators, not just their compliance function, is vital to retention.

Create structured career and development pathways

Retention strengthens when career pathways are visible. Whether through internal progression, funded qualifications, or leadership shadowing programs, services that invest in structured professional development report significantly lower turnover rates.

Implement fair, transparent reward systems

While individual services may have limited wage-setting power, many are adopting transparent pay frameworks and incentive structures, such as bonus schemes for long service, qualification attainment or high performance. Communicating the value of total employment packages including RDOs, professional learning, or wellbeing days is increasingly important.

Policy Momentum, Local Action

National and state initiatives including workforce strategy funding, scholarships, and campaign-led recruitment are important. But retention is ultimately shaped at the service level, in the day-to-day experiences of educators.

Now more than ever, leadership teams need to balance compliance pressures with relational, people-centred practices. A service’s ability to deliver consistent, high-quality education depends on the stability and engagement of its workforce. Turnover is not inevitable; it is manageable with the right strategies and support.

How McArthur Supports Retention Beyond Recruitment

McArthur is more than a recruitment partner. We work with centre leaders to co-design sustainable workforce strategies from building reliable casual pools, providing in-service training workshops and aligning recruitment practices with your pedagogy and values.

As Australia’s experienced early learning recruitment specialists, we bring unmatched sector knowledge, national reach, and a deep commitment to the future of the profession. Our clients trust us not just to find the right educators but to help retain them.

Ready to Build a More Stable, Streamlined Workforce?

Whether you're facing permanent staffing challenges, need reliable casual support, or want to simplify compliance and roster management, McArthur offers end-to-end solutions tailored for early learning recruitment and staffing services. From high-quality permanent, temporary and casual recruitment to our Matchwell workforce management platform and fully outsourced casual staff solutions, we help you reduce turnover, ensure continuity of care, and lift the administrative burden on your team.

Discover how our integrated approach can give you peace of mind, improve team stability and let you focus on what matters most, quality early learning.