Rose (Educator): [0:11] I'm able to spend more time one-on-one with the children, project build with the children, resource their learning. It's just - I feel like I'm more free in the room. I feel that I can move from space to space freely. The children, they have more friends in the class.
Diane (Educator): [0:29] Having the diploma person in the room, having a third person, you can do little project work, and you can do different things, which when you’ve got a group with a lot of children with high needs, you can’t always do.
Our indoor/outdoor program, I think benefits the children in lots of ways, like the room is calmer, there’s more opportunities to do small group work, and also its better choices for the children, they’ve got lot more choices in it. And some children, outside, they do a lot better, and you can still set up lots of different projects, and different things for them to do
Loretta (Educator): [1:07] Again, I think just having the third educator in the room, whether it be indoors or outdoors. For example, I’ve taken a small group of children outside to do some planting in the garden and there may be another educator outside because the majority of children are outside, and the other educator is in the room with children who are indoors playing for a while.
The wonderful thing about it is there’s opportunity for change because the third educator will go where the majority of the children are.
Karen (Educator): [1:36] I’ve noticed the room looks calmer, having a third educator in the room. And you probably wouldn’t expect that with more children, but it is.
Leigh (Service Provider) [1:46] When it does get a bit tricky is when the weather challenges that ability to have the outdoor-indoor program, and you have children all within a room. Then what comes into play there is rooms within a room—so how you can set the environment up to enable quiet spaces, to enable different activities for children to engage in, and for educators to move through.
Karen (Educator): [2:08] We recently went through the quality rating and assessment process, and we’re really pleased to get an exceeding result in that, which was fantastic. But now we’ve got, with the introduction of the new ratios, moving forward, really excited about what that means for us and how we can continue to build on our excellent result.
And reflecting on it, particularly in Quality Area 6, around working with communities and connecting with communities and with the families. I think that’s one area in particular that having an additional staff member will be of a benefit.
Tracey (Educator): [2:50] We do have additional needs, children in our room. We have an additional need worker for one of the children. But having a third staff member in the room, with the other additional-needs children helps a lot. You’ve got an extra pair of eyes and you can have one staff member, it doesn’t matter who it is, watching, observing that child and guiding their interactions with the other children. You’ve still got two staff to focus on the rest of the children.
Michelle (Educator): [3:20] It can be quite chaotic. Having 33 children and two staff, three staff, is just, it’s magical. It just means that you can get so much more done. You’ve got the extra set of eyes. The ratio is lower as it is, like 1:11. It just means that you can relax more into your job and actually enjoy what you’re doing without having to stress about all these things that you’ve got to get done when there’s only two people in the room.
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