The Victorian Government is offering financial incentives to attract more early childhood teachers to regional areas as the rollout of Three-Year-Old Kindergarten continues in 2021.

Minister for Early Childhood Education Ingrid Stitt announced an additional $510,000 to boost early childhood incentives and to achieve parity with incentives to attract hard-to-staff positions in schools.

Under this funding, incentives will range between $9,000 and $50,000 for successful teachers.

The funding will be available to current early childhood teachers who take jobs 100 kilometres or more from their current place of residence or who are making a switch from a teaching career in primary schools.

A once-off $3,000 relocation payment will also be available to teachers who move 200 kilometres or more away from their current home.

In an Australian-first, the Victorian Government is investing $5 billion over this decade to deliver two years of funded kindergarten for all Victorian children, with the reform underway in six local government areas this year.

Three-Year-Old Kindergarten will roll out to families in a further 15 regional areas in 2021, including Alpine, Ararat, Campaspe, Central Goldfields, Colac-Otway, Corangamite, East Gippsland, Glenelg, Hepburn, Indigo, Loddon, Murrindindi, Southern Grampians, Towong, and West Wimmera.

In addition to these incentives, support will be provided to the 2021 services in most need of teachers, to assist with their recruitment.

The reform is expected to create 6,000 new early childhood jobs including approximately 4,000 bachelor-qualified teachers and 2,000 VET-qualified educators.

The Victorian Government is investing $92.4 million in the early childhood workforce towards supporting, training and recruiting the teachers and educators we need.

The early childhood teacher incentives were launched in 2019 to encourage early childhood teachers to take up vacant positions in services first delivering Three-Year-Old Kindergarten in 2020 roll-out areas.