Kerri: Ararat is a small town at the foot of the Grampians.
[on screen text: Kerri, Managing Director, Ararat Early Learning Centre]
Kerri: Ararat Early Learning Centre started off as a 40-place centre, and we moved to a 92-place centre. We currently have 123 children enrolled across the week. Twenty of those are our 3-Year-Old kindergarten students, and twenty are our Pre-Prep students that attend for 30 hours.
When I first heard of the Best Start Best Life reforms, I thought, holy moly, how am I going to manage this? First and foremost, it was getting the workforce ready to ensure that by 2025, we would have the required number of ECTs to be able to offer 30 hours of four-year-olds, pre-preps, and 15 hours of three-year-olds.
The other thing that we really had to consider was the infrastructure. We only had five rooms, and we only used one of our rooms for kindergarten and Pre-Prep. So how we were going to offer that 30 hours took a little bit of thinking outside the box, and I had a parent from Ararat College Secondary School, and she said to me one day in passing, "If you ever need a space, Ararat College has the farm and they don't use it."
The first resource I reached out to was my local ECIB (Early Childhood Improvement Branch) team. Julie Duggan was the manager at the time, and Julie and I were on the phone regularly, discussing different options. I floated my idea of using the farm as an excursion day, and having the offsite day, and she said, "That sounds like it can work." Came to fruition, and it's probably the best thing we've ever done.
[Text on screen: Katy, Pre-Prep parent]
Katy: Within the first week of the pre-prep program being announced, and we actually had communication from our centre and just talked about that we would be rolling it out and we were one of the first to be rolling it out. We were really encouraged by the centre to just ease our way into that 30 hours, and I think that's been really beneficial to all of the kids.
Kerri: I think first and foremost what we would do, and this is what we will be changing for next year, we will offer four days being Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, and Thursday, Friday, which will give the children a little bit of a rest day, and I think that'll be imperative to setting them up to be able to handle the 30 hours a lot sooner.
Team teaching was a necessity. There's no way that one person can teach for 30 hours, as well as document, observe, plan for 20 children across a week. So team teaching was paramount in being able to offer the 30 hours of pre-prep because teaching shouldn't be about pressure. It should be about having time with children, and the opportunity to not only intentionally teach, but also spontaneously, so that children can explore, discover, and grow alongside with the staff, and the staff having the opportunity to take themselves off the floor when they need to for doing planning and documentation.
[On screen text Kelli-Anne, Early Childhood Teacher (ECT)]
Kelli-Anne: We've been co-teaching together, which has been wonderful. We both have different strengths, so united, we definitely have been a strong team.
Kerri: The other great thing about being able to offer 30 hours was that we could really slow down our pedagogy and really take time to run with projects with the children. The staff and teachers are definitely seeing the increase in children's ability to concentrate, and to actually just be in a moment and not have to rush.
[On screen text: Aimee, Early Childhood Teacher (ECT)]
Aimee: We've got four days. We can spend more time exploring beans, exploring insects, just being caught in the moment rather than having to rush all the time.
Katy: Just the consistency and the routines and the learning that she's doing here, I'm definitely noticing in that transition to school, she's a lot more confident.
Kerri: The future's pretty bright. It actually makes me feel very proud that an idea of providing a service with a high-quality early childhood education and care has been successful, and seeing this whole program evolve has been exceptional, and a real sense of pride for me.
[End transcript]
Updated