Early childhood educators leave centres for in-home work for the same reasons, repeated across the sector: the ratios, the pay, the burnout, and the gap between why they entered the profession and what the day actually looks like. Here is the honest comparison.
Child-to-educator ratios
Under the National Quality Framework, the legal educator-to-child ratios in Australian childcare centres are one educator to four children under two years, one to five for children aged two to three, and one to eleven for children three and over. These are the legal minimums. Many centres operate at exactly these ratios.
In in-home childcare, the ratio is one carer to the children in that household. Most families have one to three children. The work is genuinely individual.
Pay
A Cert III educator in a Melbourne centre earns from 29.52 dollars per hour under the Children's Services Award (as restructured from March 2026). A carer on the Nest and Nurture Little Ones platform earns 40 dollars per hour for a single-child booking and 55 dollars per hour for two children. The same qualification, a different structure.
Autonomy and professional judgement
Centre work operates within the constraints of a regulated environment: room programming, compliance documentation, shift structures, room leadership hierarchies and centre-wide policies. In-home work requires the carer to apply their professional judgement independently, directly with the family, adapting to the children and the home. Experienced educators consistently describe in-home work as more professionally satisfying for exactly this reason.
Physical and emotional load
Managing a room of eleven three-year-olds across a full shift is a different physical and emotional experience to caring for two or three children in a home. Both are demanding. The in-home environment reduces the volume and the unpredictability of group dynamics, which is a meaningful difference across a working week.
Stability and consistency
Centre rosters involve rotating rooms, relief shifts, and variable hours. In-home bookings through Nest and Nurture Little Ones are matched and recurring. A carer approved by a family returns to the same children, at the same address, on the same schedule. The work is consistent, the relationships are real, and the professional satisfaction reflects it.
The honest summary
- Ratios: 1 to 11 in a centre, 1 to 1 or 2 in a home
- Pay: from 29.52 dollars per hour at a centre, from 40 dollars per hour in-home
- Autonomy: constrained in centres, high in-home
- Consistency: variable rosters at centres, recurring matched bookings in-home
- Physical load: high in group care, lower in a home environment
Experienced cleaner? Apply to join the rotation
50 dollars per hour minimum take-home, a flat 20 dollar fee, weekly Wednesday pay. We review every application manually.
Apply to clean with us