Media Releases
January 2007
Education Drought Continues
NO AIDE IN SIGHT FOR PREP IN 2007
Monday January 29th 2007 will be an historic day for Education in Queensland with over 26,000 four year olds attending their first day of PREP, as it rolls out to every primary school in the state.
Many of these young children will be in classrooms of 25 or more.
The Beattie government is short changing our young and vulnerable children by supplying only a part time teacher’s aide to assist the prep teacher.
Throughout the implementation of the prep trials, there were many problems identified within the new system, but not solved. The issue surrounding the lack of support to students and teachers because of insufficient teacher aide hours allocated to prep, have lead to reports of children’s safety being compromised on numerous occasions.
PREP-ALERT, and other child advocacy groups and over 4000 people who signed a petition are still calling for full time teacher aides in every prep classroom as an essential component to ensure the safety and educational well being of our young children.
If Mr Welford and Mr Beattie continue to ignore these pleas for full-time aides then all children in state primary schools could potentially be missing out on crucial educational assistance from teacher aides.
Principals are being advised by Education Minister Mr Welford to take teacher aide hours from the rest of the school in order to provide additional support for Prep classes – reducing the much needed aide time for grades 1-7. How can this possibly be considered a smart decision?
Of course we know that children will not die in Prep classrooms because of the lack of a full-time teacher aide. What is dying is Queensland’s opportunity to showcase a truly innovative, well supported and well resourced early childhood initiative.
The Prep year will now be our children’s introduction into the institution of school and Mr Beattie and Mr Welford are asking our 5 year olds to almost do it on their own.
Yes, they will have a full-time teacher with them (at least when they are in the classroom because what happens at the lunch breaks is anyone’s guess) but one adult in a class or 25 five year olds won’t be providing much one-on-one support to anyone.
Why is it that in 2007, 5 year olds are not entitled to the same level of support that was provided to 5 year olds in 2006?
For the last 30 years children in state preschools were supported in their introduction to the schooling system by a full-time teacher and a full-time teacher aide, in a purpose built facility, with a fenced outdoor play area, sandpit, on-site toilet facilities, and open areas both indoor and out to allow for constructive play-based and investigative learning.
Well meaning and dedicated prep teachers will work extra hard to try to make the best with what they’ve got – because that is what good teachers do. However, they can not do the impossible – they can not split themselves in two! The most important resource needed for this age group is adult support, to ensure the best possible educational, emotional and social outcomes for this age group.
Despite publicly promising to monitor teacher aide time for prep in 2007and increasing aide time if needed, during a private meeting with members of Prep–Alert on December 13th 2006, Mr Welford admitted that there are no plans in place to monitor the implementation of prep in term 1 and that he has no intention of doing any monitoring of prep from day 1.
Mr Welford was unable to say when the promised monitoring of prep would start, who would be doing the monitoring or who would be participating in this process. What a debacle! We have called on the Minister to honour his promise and monitor Prep from day 1, ensuring that the feedback is gathered independently, transparently and from both teachers and parents. An independent review of the monitoring must then be done.
Prep-alert has also called upon the Commissioner for Children and Young People and Child Guardian to advocate for young children’s rights to have appropriate standards of safety and supervision allocated to Prep, as has previously been the case (prior to 2007) for 4-6 year old children in Queensland.
With the help of parents and teachers throughout Queensland, Prep-Alert will try to do what the Beattie government won’t do and monitor what is happening in schools and prep classrooms from day one 29 January 2007.
Prep-Alert will be asking all parents, teachers and community members to let us know of issues in schools. We want to know if prep classrooms are not ready, or if they are being used for classes other than prep, how many hours of teacher aide time are classes getting, is any extra aide time being taken from other grades to help bolster prep, can teachers implement a play-based curriculum properly when they are on their own for half the day, are children placed in dangerous or unsafe situations because of a lack of adequate supervision, is there an outdoor play area that includes a sandpit, just how far away from the classroom are the toilets, are there enough resources?
You can share your experiences by emailing prep-alert at hotmail.com or leaving your comments by clicking on Have your Say? under Recent Posts.
By ourselves we can change little but as a community of concerned parents, teachers and citizens we can bring pressure to bear on a Government that at the moment is refusing to take our concerns seriously.
Prep-Alert is now seeking a meeting with Premier Beattie.
February 2007
Never before have there been 4 year olds at School
We now have children at school at a younger age with (at most schools) the same physical conditions ie.only a low perimeter fence with unlocked gates / adult size toilets away from the room and no soap / play equipment that is too big for them in a playground that is too large and full of older children.
The Government is putting these younger children into a system that is totally inappropriate for their development (emotional, social and physical) ie. expecting them to cope with having to sit still and quietly at assemblies / balance lunch boxes on knees in a squashy and noisy lunch area and actually eat / see a string of specialist teachers one after the other (with no consistent aide with them to help) because it makes easier planning for the timetables / cope with bullying in the playground by themselves because they can’t find the teacher and don’t know them anyway, so are too nervous to approach.
Of course the greatest injustice being done to these 4 and 5 year olds, is not providing adequate supervision by trained adults. It is deplorable that there is anything less than a full time teacher’s aide with each prep class. We are hearing from teachers that the play based curriculum is impossible to implement because of inadequate staffing and the expectation that the prep class will follow the bells and routines of the school.