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Professionals · code 2342

Early childhood educators

Early childhood educators promote the social, physical, and intellectual development of children below primary school age through the provision of educational and play activities. Tasks include - (a) planning and organizing individual and group activities designed to facilitate the development of children’s motor, cooperative and social skills, confidence and understanding; (b) promoting language development through storytelling, role play, songs, rhymes and informal conversations and discussions; (c) leading children in activities that provide opportunities for creative expression through the media of art, dramatic play, music and physical fitness; (d) observing children in order to evaluate progress and to detect signs of developmental, emotional or health-related problems; (e) observing and assessing nutritional health, welfare and safety needs of students and identifying factors which may impede students’ progress; (f) supervising children’s activities to ensure safety and resolve conflicts; (g) guiding and assisting children in the development of proper eating, dressing and toilet habits; (h) discussing progress or problems of children with parents and other staff members and identifying appropriate actions and referrals to other services; (i) establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with other service providers working with young children. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Early childhood educator - Pre-school teacher Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Child care centre manager - 1341 - Child care worker - 5311

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 154 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • early years teacher
  • Montessori school teacher
  • Freinet school teacher

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

79.2
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 20.8 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 20.8 = 79.2

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

27.1
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

19.6
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 27.8 · hand skill 22.3 · cramped spaces 8.6 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 27.1 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 28, while the average is 20.8. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 28

    Planning and organizing individual and group activities designed to facilitate the development of children's motor skills, cooperative and social skills, confidence and understanding

    Low
  2. 25

    Observing and assessing nutritional health, welfare and safety needs of students and identifying factors which may impede students' progress

    Low
  3. 24.5

    Discussing progress or problems of children with parents and other staff members and identifying appropriate actions and referrals to other services

    Very Low
  4. 22.5

    Establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with other service providers working with young children.

    Very Low
  5. 21.5

    Promoting language development through story-telling, role-play, songs, rhymes and informal conversations and discussions

    Very Low
  6. 19

    Observing children in order to evaluate progress and to detect signs of developmental, emotional or health related problems

    Very Low
  7. 18

    Supervising children's activities to ensure safety and resolve conflicts

    Very Low
  8. 17.8

    Leading children in activities that provide opportunities for creative expression through the media of art, dramatic play, music and physical fitness

    Very Low
  9. 11

    Guiding and assisting children in the development of proper eating, dressing and toilet habits

    Very Low

9 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
64
AI does it for you
27

Helping wins by 37 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 2411

Compared with similar jobs

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” group, averaging 61.1. This one is above that.