Moyhu Kindergarten Concerns

Moyhu Kindergarten Parents Association this week invited Rural City of Wangaratta (RCoW) Councillors and local politicians to visit their kindergarten and hear their concerns regarding funding.

This follows the recent decision by the (RCoW) to provide a one-off payment to the mobile kindergarten that services Whitfield which is also experiencing funding difficulties associated with low student numbers.

Nationals Member for Benalla, Bill Sykes and RCoW Councillor, Justin Scholz listened to parents concerns over a cuppa and then found time to join the students in the sand pit.

Dr Sykes said, “Moyhu Kindergarten’s funding problem highlights the ongoing pressure that our small communities experience in maintaining basic services and activities that larger communities take for granted. Kindergartens, schools, sporting clubs and other interest groups are all under financial pressure.

“In the case of Moyhu, with only eight students the current State government funding formula results in insufficient income and as a result parents and volunteers spend a lot of time raising money just to meet operational costs – this should not have to occur.”

Dr Sykes continued, “From my discussions with the parents, I’ve identified a couple of options for better funding. I will ask Sherryl Garbutt, the Minister responsible for kindergartens to apply a common sense interpretation to current policies – firstly by providing funding for students who commence kindergarten part-way through the year; at this stage, students who commence kindergarten after the Census in March do not attract funding if they have already been funded at another kindergarten in Victoria. Consideration should be given to funding being transferable if families move locations.

A second request will be to adjust the current funding formula so that every new student attracts funding rather than the situation where kindergartens get paid for each new student up to 10 but then no extra funding is provided for additional students until numbers reach 15. This means some kindergartens may be teaching 3-4 students without funding – that is not fair and makes it really tough on small kindergartens”.

Dr Sykes concluded, “The Nationals believe the kindergarten management needs a substantial overhaul. We welcome recent Government commitment to give kindergarten teachers pay parity with primary school teachers but more needs to be done. We strongly believe that kindergartens should be the responsibility of the Minister for Education (not Community Services as at present) and that kindergartens should be clearly aligned with primary schools to get savings in administration costs and greater continuity of parent committees. This is already working well in some situations.

“Again, we need Government recognition of the particular issues impacting on small rural communities and then to apply common sense solutions in consultation with the communities”.