A new partnership between Ooranga and Carroll Public School is meeting the demand for a pre-school in the village.
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Ooranga started up Carroll Preschool in late January at Carroll Public School to meet the need for a local facility and help boost future numbers at the school.
The pre-school is open on Mondays and Wednesdays, with eight children already attending and a ninth to start in March.
The NVI visited on Monday to chat to parents about the advantage of having a pre-school close by.
Amelia Smith lives in Carroll and is now sending her four-year-old son Harley to the pre-school one day a week.
“It’s convenient,” she said.
“It’s really an amonaly that it wasn’t here before because most schools have a pre-school nearby… and I think it’s really good to fill that gap.
“I think it’s an amazing feeder for the school to funnel kids in.
“The facilities are amazing as well. Last week [Harley] couldn’t tell me how great the toys were.”
Fellow mum Kari Morton lives in Gunnedah and now has one child, Sienna, attending Carroll Preschool while her brother is in Kindergarten at the school.
“I like the smaller schools,” she said.
“[Sienna] loves it.”
Three-year-old Dustin French was also at the pre-school on Monday, meeting his teachers Abby Musgrove and Jess Carolan for the first time. His family is moving from South Australia to a farm nearby and decided to check out the local facilities for both Dustin and their school-age son Jackson.
The boys’ father Ben said it’s great to have it close to their new home.
“It’s awesome,” he said.
“It looks pretty good so far.”
Ooranga’s executive officer Rebecca Dridan said it’s been a “fairly long journey” for Ooranga, which was first approached by Carroll Public School in 2016.
“They saw a need for pre-school for the kids enrolling in kindergarten out there. Obviously, because they’re so small and the size, they couldn’t attract the funding and there were other barriers for parents trying to access early childhood services; having to travel to Gunnedah,” she said.
“Part of the aim was to lighten the load on Gunnedah services because of that waiting list already being experienced. Hopefully, it will not only get kids that aren’t accessing childhood services in but also help those pre-schools which are overwhelmed.
“We’ve actually had some parents withdraw their kids from a preschool in Gunnedah.
“It sort of made sense to have something local so they could have a smooth transition into school.”
Carroll Public School’s relieving principal Rebecca Dowe said the new pre-school was “fabulous for the parents”.
“We needed it,” she said.
“I think it makes it easier on the parents and the children rather than having that drive into Gunnedah.
“It’s so much more convenient for parents to bring their kids here and it will feed up into the school.
“We’re getting other kids coming into our school because of the pre-school.”
Ms Dridan said the pre-school wasn’t established earlier because of lack of funding.
“Originally, the NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Directorate said there was no flexibility to add services to existing contracts, which was a bit frustrating for people all round, really,” she said.
“Then Sarah Mitchell started as Minister for Early Childhood Education and then we had a meeting with her last year and discussed what those issues were and she went back to the government department and managed to come up with a new venue for mobile pre-school.
“As yet they haven’t opened the portal for funding.”
Ms Dridan said Ooranga has “just jumped in”.
“We received [$5000] funding through Monsanto, which are run through FRRR [Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal] for resources to get it going,” she said.
“We started operating term one this year, so it’s very exciting for us. The staff are diving right in there and it’s going well.
“Ultimately, what [NSW Early Childhood Education and Care Directorate] said is per new venue, as long as you fit the criteria, they will provide $60,000 per venue per year, so if you get that going in year one then there will be supplementary funding for the following year.
“Criteria is that you’ve got to have a minimum of five eligible children so that word eligible relates to the age, they must be four years old, identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander or come from a low-income family.
“We’re only licensed for 17 kids there but I don’t think we’ll have any trouble meeting the criteria.”
Ooranga also operates pre-schools in other small villages including Curlewis, Mullaley and Boggabri.
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