The South Australian Government has pledged major reforms to pre-school education, but it's conceded it's facing a challenge to find all the staff it needs to do it. It's made the admission as it launches so called Kindy Care a program aimed at making Kindergarten easier for working parents.
Category
đŸ“º
TVTranscript
00:00Life's a juggle for the Lovell family.
00:05You have to rely a lot on grandparents and other people and yeah, it puts a little bit
00:11of a strain on pick-ups.
00:12Four-year-old Emmett is among the first in South Australia able to access kindy care.
00:17It allows preschool aged children to stay at kindergartens beyond their usual opening
00:22hours.
00:23Those traditional hours of nine to three for school, you know, were kind of set in stone
00:28in a period when a lot of families had one parent possibly at home.
00:33Trials of kindy care are now underway at 20 sites across the state.
00:37The program is one of the recommendations from Julia Gillard's Early Learning Royal
00:41Commission.
00:42Beautiful stones aren't they, pretty stones.
00:44The Education Minister admits the government has a battle on its hands to find the more
00:48than 1,500 extra staff needed for the reforms, which includes offering preschool to three-year-olds.
00:55Job opportunities out there are strong at the moment, which means we are competing
01:00in all these areas we are trying to recruit with other industries that are paying well
01:04and trying to recruit as well.
01:07Blair Boyer believes the staffing targets can still be met, optimism not shared by the
01:13opposition.
01:14And as we're hearing, the early childhood sector is struggling to retain the staff they
01:19have.
01:20This is a workforce crisis in our education sector.
01:23The three-year-old preschool will start to be rolled out from the beginning of 2026.