M is starting preschool this year and yes she is very, very excited (and so are we). Nearly daily she checks the calender to see how long to go. For a few weeks now her school backpack has been one of her favourite toys. She’d frequently put it on and say “Mama, ich gehe zur Schule. Du kannst mich abholen! Tschüß!” (Mummy, I need to go to school now. You can come and pick me up when I’m finished. Bye!). She’ll trot off to the other end of the house, where her imaginary preschool is and there she’ll welcome all her imaginary friends “Hello, all my friends!”.
Unfortunately, many children her age are missing out because their parents can’t afford to send them. According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) New South Wales (NSW) has got the lowest preschool attendance rate and the highest fees.
In Western Australia preschool is free, and in other states the cost is a fraction of the NSW charge of about $30 a day. A Productivity Commission report this year found NSW spends less than any other state on children’s services and has the lowest preschool attendance rate.
Kerry Grigg, a rural spokeswoman for Children’s Choice, said a preschool in Albury will charge $28.25 a day a next year while over the border in Wodonga the cost will be about $8.75 a day. A further inequity is the historic division in NSW between the community preschools funded by the Department of Community Services and about 100 preschools funded by the Department of Education. An Education Department preschool in Albury charges about $2 a day.
I couldn’t believe it when I read this. Unfortunately, there’s only 100 Department of Education preschools in NSW in comparison to 800 community preschools, who have to fight for their share in a tiny budget allocated to them.
The sad truth is that this non-attendance of preschool disadvantages children at school as a further SMH article describes.
Bert Oldfield Primary School, in Seven Hills, said many parents were unable to afford fees for preschool and their children had fallen behind as a result.
“Their literacy experiences in particular are very limited, which puts them behind some of their peers and certainly behind the state,” the school’s response said.
The article also states that children who didn’t attend preschool
were more likely to display social and emotional problems, difficulties with fine motor skills and lower academic standards. “Generally, the children who start school at Rouse Hill without preschool experience come with little or no sight words,” the school said.
The article finishes off by reporting on a mum who is prepared to spend $65 a day to send her son to preschool in a suburb of Sydney.
That was too much for me bear. At this point I have to agree with John Marsden, an Australian author and school founder, who said in a recent TV show that Michael and I watched that
Education is really struggling. It’s a funny thing that in Australia we claim that we value young people, we talk very beautifully about that, but we show our contempt for them by the amount of money we allocate to education, for example, by the way we structure schools. There is evidence everywhere we look, at just how little we value children. And so we talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. (emphasis not mine)
The situation is really ridiculous!
Here in Germany it’s much better, but they’re only in Kindergarten for half a day (which is probably enough for the littlest ones), but I guess every country has some things which are great and other things which are not so great (i.e. I find the health insurance system here in Germany to be really complicated and often unfair).
On the whole, the Australian education system comes out looking a lot better than the German…so I guess you’ve just got to wait until she reaches school age to really take advantage of that.
True, there’s lots of raisins to be picked out of each country as they all have their strong points and weak points.
I wasn’t really talking about the Australian education system as a whole, though. Even the preschool system as a whole is really good in my point of view (as I said we’re very excited to be sending M).
I just can’t understand those grose inequalities between states that exists in Australia. And this is where NSW falls far behind other states that seem to value education (at least the early childhood part of education) more than NSW.
Hi there,
Let me first say thanks for giving me the momentum to change over to WordPress. I feel a have a lot more freedom now than before.
Secondly I hope that enthusiasm little M has will continue all the way through her schooling. I haven’t lived in OZ for 6 years now so it is hard for me to comment on the costs of education, although I think it is crazy for there to be such a difference between states and yes governments love using the platform that they value education so highly, but more and more schools are having to fend for themselves. Funny how the government still likes to take our hard earned money in taxes when we have to invest so heavily in the people we become.
As a teacher the one thing only I could hope is that M countinues to be excited about learning – it’s hard to develop that in children, but with such involved parents I think she is on the path to success. I look forward to reading how the start of her school life goes. Enjoy!
Hi pukkalad,
thanks for visiting. I’m happy to see that there’s some more people without kids who can get something out of my blog, as I do tend to write about those little guys a lot
Good luck with wordpress. It really is empowering and so much more flexible!!
Yes, we hope that she’ll stay as keen and interested as what she is now as it will greatly help her in life and she might be able to drag others along with her enthusiasm.
Hi Fran – looks like you are ahead of the pack! The Herald just published an article very similar to your post, have a look at:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/preschool-that-wont-break-the-bank/2007/01/30/1169919341530.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Thanks for that article, really very interesting!
I’m not ahead, though, I just conducted my own ‘research’ on google after reading the last two articles I quoted in this post. I just found it so unbelievable that this inequality between states should be true.
With this information in mind it seems even more important to be talking about a national education program. Maybe education should be a federal and not a state issue.