Aussie Childcare Network Forum

Hi all,
I hold a certificate III in children's services and have been working in the industry for the past 7-8 years. I'm currently employed by a child care and preschool centre.

I am looking to upgrade my qualification to Diploma but I got told that the course has been updated and my certificate III in children's services has no matching credits. So I will need to do certificate III in early childhood education and care and then diploma. Is it true? How can my qulificaion turn into a piece of rubbish paper ? And if I do the new course now, does that mean few years later when everything update and change again I will have to do a new course all over again (of course paying the tuition fee all over again and again)

Speaking from experience (I completed my cert 3 7 years ago so we possibly did the same version of the certificate III in children's services), yes your units would be 'out of date' so you need to complete the entire Diploma. Your current qualification however isn't worthless - you still hold an approved qualification. All it means is that those units which you had in your cert 3 no longer match anything in the current diploma so unfortunately you can't have any credit transfers. I had the same thing when I started my diploma in 2017. However, as Lorina said, the cert 3 units are in the diploma qualification so you shouldn't have to complete the cert 3 all over again. I know I didn't, I could just start working towards my diploma. What they may have meant is that you need to complete all of the cert 3 units first which is correct as I'm pretty sure you do those first, & then the diploma ones. But you don't get a new cert 3 certificate for completing those units as you're doing them as a part of the diploma