Cash boost to get kindergarten kids school-ready
A $3.7 million funding boost will be used to help prepare kindergarteners for school, amid fears they missed out on crucial socialisation during a stop-start year of learning.
Early Years
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Hundreds of Victorian kindergartens will receive up to $5000 to help them prepare four-year-olds for starting school.
The state government will hand 1700 kinders more than $3.7 million, to be used during term four for transition programs to assist with school readiness.
The money can be used by services to fund more time for teachers to spend one-on-one time with children and for individual children to access allied health support such as speech pathologist and occupational therapists.
However, it will only be available to services that are not receiving funds from the Victorian Government’s $160 million School Readiness Funding initiative.
It follows concerns that many weeks of home-based learning have led to preschoolers missing essential socialisation and education needed to prepare them for school.
Early Childhood Minister Ingrid Stitt said that “early childhood staff across Victoria have done an outstanding job at supporting children and families during this challenging year – and we’re extending the support we’re providing these services”.
“We’re making sure Victorian children get the most out of their last term at kinder and have a great start to school,” she said.
It comes as sessional kinder in Victoria is free for term four under a $26.7 million package of support.
The government has also recently allowed transitional visits to allow children to visit their new primary schools in small groups. The new rules stipulate that groups of no more than ten incoming prep children and their parents and educators may visit primary schools.
Parents such as Elisha Aarons, who started an influential change.org petition, were concerned that a ban on such activities would mean kinder kids weren’t prepared for school.
Funds will be spent replacing prep teachers so they can go to preschools and meet their new students.
The announcements come as many primary schools are beginning their prep transition sessions. These include parent information nights, which may now be held online, along with small groups of preschoolers visiting prep classrooms.
Cindy McLeish, Opposition education minister, said it had “taken far too long to provide certainty for kinder parents regarding the school transition program”.
Year six children are still not allowed to go to high schools to meet their year seven teachers or get to know the school lay-out.
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