Steer clear - awful working environment - Lead Educator Journey Early Learning Employee Review

-Beautiful connections with children and families. - embedded bush kindy experiences. - rituals instead of routine.

I’d been working here 10 years and what started as beautiful place to work, and quickly went downhill. Educators were overworked with more things being added to their plates. The room layout made it hard to support nappy changes/bathroom monitoring wile also being told to run an inside outside program. Absolutely no support from head office and educators voices not being heard and issues go unacknowledged. When asking for new resources we were shut down because of “budgeting” but when head office made appearances to the centre, we were told that the centre was unsightly and why weren’t old/broken recourses thrown away. I’d only seen money poured into the center when the owners were visiting or when assessment and rating was approaching. They claim that they’re on the path to exceeding but I’ve not seen any exceeding qualities besides educators interactions with families and children. The massive turnover of staff this year of 7 staff is evident that this is not a great place to work. Educators rarely get programming time, maybe 3 hours a month if you’re lucky. Whenever they ask for feedback through resonate surveys, honest feedback and complaints always go unrecognised with no solution from head office. I believe that it’s no longer a safe place to work or send your children. There’s no support for educators working alongside children with additional needs, so staff are juggling the needs of 26 children in a 22 space room.

The children are the best part and some educators genuinely care

Chronic understaffing and unrealistic expectations lead to burnout. Leadership is inconsistent, reactive, and often absent when support is needed. Culture feels blame-focused, with heavy micromanagement and constant scrutiny. Communication changes week to week with little clarity or follow-through. High turnover creates instability, extra workload, and poor continuity of care. Professional wellbeing is talked about, but not genuinely protected in practice. Gaslighting culture: concerns were minimised, reframed, or denied until staff questioned their own judgement. Issues were often spun as “your perception” rather than addressed as real operational problems. When mistakes happened, leadership shifted the narrative instead of owning decisions and fixing systems. Staff were told expectations were “clear,” even when instructions changed constantly. Raising problems felt risky because the response was defensiveness, not support.