General News
27 March, 2023
Plan to help children move from kinder to school to boost resilience, create better outcomes
Central Goldfields Shire schools, kinders, allied health providers and social support agencies have banded together to create a “powerful plan” to help make the transition from kinder to school easier for children and families, increasing...
Central Goldfields Shire schools, kinders, allied health providers and social support agencies have banded together to create a “powerful plan” to help make the transition from kinder to school easier for children and families, increasing children’s resilience and long-term outcomes.
A Go Goldfields project, the Central Goldfields Transitions Plan — Ensuring a Great Start to School for All Kids sets out an approach and professional commitments to help create successful transition experiences for children and their families leaving early years education and care services and starting school.
Every local kinder and primary school participated in the project, with the plan co-designed by foundation teachers, early childhood educators, school principals, early childhood care services, social support agencies, allied health providers and the Central Goldfields Shire Council.
According to Go Goldfields, research shows that a positive start to school helps disrupt cycles of social and economic disadvantage and increases resilience in children.
“It’s an area that has high opportunity,” Go Goldfields manager Carolyn Bartholomeusz said.
“We discovered in our community engagement a number of parents felt they weren’t quite prepared for the significant change that occurred between kinder and school.
“There was room for improvement in how we support families through that process.
“The plan creates a common language and organised events for services, kinders and schools to align their practice and support for children in transition. We know that successful transitions rely on children, families, educators, and teachers developing positive and supportive relationships.”
Ms Bartholomeusz said transi-tioning to school can be stressful and challenging.
“The evidence suggests that if children have a positive transition, they’re much more likely to have better outcomes. It’s such a critical time,” she said.
“There’s a whole lot of services that end and start when a child leaves kinder and starts school. There’s different types of funding available.
“The better the relationships we have across the two, the less likely that there’ll be an interruption in support for child.”
Expected short term outcomes from the plan include:
• Improved communication and understanding between kinder and foundation teachers to support transition
• Increased understanding of kindergarten registration and enrolment process for families
• Improved communication between families and schools about the importance of attendance — and supporting families to maintain regular attendance
• Increased awareness of disadvantage among classroom teachers, kindergarten teachers, and education support staff.
Schools and kinders have also committed to ensure open days and transition days fall within an agreed timeline and are communicated early to families.
“There’s already a really strong collegiate approach in Central Goldfields, we’ve just harnessed that to take it a little bit further,” Ms Bartholomeusz said.
“We expect to have a really coordinated approach. The kinders and schools are already talking about the best days to hold information sessions so that families have an opportunity to not have competing things on the same night, and get it in their calendars early.”
Go Goldfields will be responsible for coordinating collection and reporting on data, with the aim to update the plan each year to keep it relevant.
Ms Bartholomeusz said other local government areas have expressed interest in the model.
“We’ve had a number of other local government areas reach out after hearing about this work wanting to do the same thing, so we’re leading the way in this type of approach,” she said.
Carisbrook Primary School was one of the local schools involved in the project and principal Chrissy Drummond said it helps fill a gap in the region.
“It’s a really powerful project,” she said.
“The transition from kinder to school is really one of the biggest you make in your life. To have all these sectors from across the Central Goldfields working together for our students and families is huge.
“We do lack some services in this region so that’s where schools and eductors need to step in to provide information. This will make sure kids are getting the best start.”
Ms Drummond said information sharing is a positive to come out of the project.
“The focus on the information sharing between schools and kinders is great — foundation and kinder teachers give up their time to meet for a night to find out all about the kids, but the visits between kinder and school are also important because we don’t want school to be a scary place, and that’s facilitated through this program,” she said.
“If a good relationship is built between school and home, that child is going to succeed.”
The shire’s only prep to VCE school, Maryborough Education Centre, also contributed to the plan and transition coordinator Maddi Dwyer said while it will support students and families, the creation process was beneficial for educators.
“Having the plan is really useful for educators, but the actual process of developing it also allowed for us professionals to network and get to know each other which is really important,” she said.
“We discussed what was working well with our transition, what we needed to improve on, and agreed on best practice to make the transition from kinder to school more effective.
“We were also able to talk about what we’re noticing kids are struggling with and getting to know the teachers and families before they come to our schools, it was really useful.
“Our kids are disadvantaged here in Maryborough so anything we can do that helps kinders and schools be on the same page is great.”
Ms Dwyer said having a coordinated transition timeline will better support children.
“There was definitely a need for a plan and a consistent approach across all schools,” she said.
“Having a timeline to work from really gives kinders and schools a clear expectation on when we need to start thinking about transition so no matter what kinder or school your child attends, they’re going to get the same considered approach.”