Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood and Primary)

UNE has trained a disproportionate share of regional NSW's teaching workforce for decades, largely because it was one of the first Australian universities to offer education degrees by distance study, and the Early Childhood and Primary combined degree reflects that regional-supply mission directly. A lot of graduates end up teaching in exactly the kind of small-town and rural schools that struggle hardest to recruit and retain staff.

The dual qualification (early childhood plus primary) is a deliberate structural choice: it widens graduates' employability across the birth-to-12 age range rather than locking them into one narrower registration category, which matters more in regional labour markets where a single small town might only have openings in one sector in a given year.

Professional placement blocks run through partner schools and early learning centres across the New England region and beyond for online students, and UNE's placement office has built relationships specifically geared toward regional and rural schools that a metropolitan education faculty's placement network wouldn't reach as naturally.