Respect Early Childhood Educators: Stop the Misplaced Blame

Early childhood educators are being unfairly targeted by fear-driven narratives and reactive policy changes, despite evidence showing they are among the safest and most dedicated professionals in the education system.

At a recent NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian child safe webinar, officials presented data showing that early childhood education recorded the lowest number of sexual assault cases across age groups in the past five years. This evidence directly contradicts the perception that early childhood settings are unsafe or uniquely vulnerable.

Yet despite this, reforms and scrutiny continue to disproportionately fall on early childhood education professionals who nurture, protect, and grow young minds every single day.

Meanwhile, media coverage has amplified isolated incidents. Investigations such as the ABC Four Corners childcare safety report highlighted systemic issues in large private operators, including poor quality services and high staff turnover. While such reporting is important, the framing often paints the entire profession with a broad brush, overshadowing the fact that most educators provide safe, nurturing environments.

Policy responses have followed suit. The ACECQA review of child safety arrangements in 2023 led to reforms agreed upon by education ministers in 2025. While well-intentioned, many frontline educators argue these measures fail to address structural issues such as staffing shortages, underprepared trainees, and inadequate regulatory follow-up.

At the same time, educators are finally receiving long-overdue recognition in some areas. The federal government recently delivered a 15% pay raise for early childhood educators, acknowledging that “love doesn’t pay the rent.” Yet this progress is undermined when the profession is simultaneously cast as unsafe or untrustworthy.

Comparative Evidence: Child Sexual Assault Cases by Age Group (NSW, past 5 years)

Why Secondary Schools Aren’t Framed as “Highest Risk” in Media

• Reporting Bias:
  Adolescents (12–17) are more likely to disclose abuse, so their cases appear in statistics. But media often frames these disclosures as individual tragedies rather than systemic failures in secondary schools.

• Institutional Power:
  Secondary schools are larger, more established institutions with strong unions, parent associations, and government ties. Criticizing them directly risks political backlash, whereas early childhood centres are fragmented and easier to target.

• Narrative Simplicity:
  Early childhood education is often portrayed as “vulnerable children in care.” That framing is emotionally charged and easier for media to sensationalize than the more complex dynamics of adolescent abuse (which often involves peers, online grooming, or family contexts rather than institutions).

• Policy Optics:
  Governments prefer to show they are “acting decisively” in childcare because reforms there are more visible and politically palatable. Secondary school reforms are slower, more expensive, and harder to implement — so the spotlight shifts to early childhood instead.

• Data Presentation:
  Agencies like the NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian do present comparative data (as in the webinar you mentioned), but media outlets often cherry-pick the most emotive angle. The fact that adolescents are the highest-risk doesn’t fit the narrative of “childcare crisis,” so it gets buried.

What Does Get Reported

• Media tends to cover individual secondary school cases (e.g., teacher misconduct, peer assaults) as isolated scandals.
• Broader systemic reporting (like the AIHW data showing adolescents are most at risk nationally) rarely makes headlines because it doesn’t have the same shock value as “childcare centres failing children.”

Advocacy Opportunity

This gap is actually a powerful lever for you:

• By highlighting that secondary schools are statistically the highest-risk group, you can expose the imbalance in scrutiny.
• It reframes the debate: Why is the safest sector (early childhood) being over-regulated, while the highest-risk sector (secondary schools) escapes systemic accountability?

Media Framing of Early Learning Services vs. Secondary Schools

Media tends to frame childcare as a “sector crisis” with systemic failures, while secondary school sexual assault cases are usually reported as isolated incidents. This creates an imbalance: the highest-risk group (adolescents in secondary schools) is underrepresented in public debate compared to early childhood education.

Media Framing of Childcare vs. Secondary Schools

Childcare Sector Coverage

• ABC Four Corners Investigation (2025): Exposed “widespread failures” in childcare safety, including abuse, neglect, and regulatory breakdowns. It was framed as a national crisis Australian Business Journal.
• ABC Gold Walkley Award (2025): Awarded for investigative reporting into childcare failures, highlighting systemic abuse and neglect across the $20 billion sector ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
• 60 Minutes “Screaming” Episode (2025): Sparked outrage by portraying childcare centres as unsafe, with untrained staff and neglect, leading to calls for urgent reform Aussie Childcare Network.
• ABC News Feature (2025): Linked childcare failures to broader social issues, such as women leaving the workforce due to fear of unsafe childcare ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Pattern: Childcare is consistently portrayed as a sector-wide crisis, with systemic failures and urgent need for reform.

Secondary School Coverage

• ABC News (2023): Reported on a South Australian high school student allegedly sexually assaulted by peers. The Ombudsman found the school failed to provide adequate support, but the coverage framed it as a single school failure, not a systemic issue ABC.
• Royal Commission Final Report (2017): Documented extensive abuse in schools (government, Catholic, independent). Despite its findings, subsequent media coverage often focused on historical cases rather than ongoing systemic risk childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au.
• University of Canberra Research (2022): Found that media reporting of child sexual abuse in schools tends to emphasize individual scandals rather than systemic patterns researchsystem.canberra.edu.au.

Pattern: Secondary school cases are reported as isolated incidents (teacher misconduct, peer assault, individual school failures), not as evidence of a broader systemic crisis.

Why This Matters

• Evidence shows adolescents (12–17) are the highest-risk group, yet media and policy attention disproportionately target early childhood education.
• Narrative imbalance: Childcare is stigmatized as unsafe, while secondary schools — where most cases occur — are shielded by institutional power and framed as exceptions.
• Advocacy leverage: By exposing this contrast, you can argue that reforms must be evidence-based, not fear-driven, and that respect for early childhood educators is overdue.

Early childhood education is the safest age group, yet it is unfairly portrayed as unsafe. Secondary schools are the highest-risk group, but their cases are minimized as isolated events. This imbalance must be challenged to restore respect for educators and ensure reforms target the real areas of risk.

Educators deserve respect, gratitude, and meaningful support. Without them, families, communities, and the economy falter. It is time to stop the misplaced blame and start building a system that values the people who nurture our youngest citizens.

Further Reading 

Raise the Ratios: Protect Children, Support Educators
Six-Point Plan to Restore Trust in Early Childhood Education
Victoria Revokes Working with Children Checks for 40 Educators
Childcare Provider Warns of Unintended Consequences from New Safety Rules

Reference: 
Sources: NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian webinar (2025); Australian Institute of Health and Welfare child protection statistics.