Nurturing the future | Little Scholars September 2024
Little Scholars School of Early Learning
When you walk through the doors at Little Scholars, your perception of early education and care will change forever.
Welcome back to our monthly newsletter! It's October already, but for our teams and our little scholars, reflecting on September brings big smiles! From celebrating Early Childhood Educators Day, to Little Scholars Stapylton's Community Day, our monthly leadership retreat, to Children's Council meetings and Little Scholars Ashmore's new and shiny playground, it's been a great month! Keep reading!
Early Childhood Educators Day
Each year, we're proud to celebrate the incredible human beings who show up every day to our campuses and bring with them enthusiasm, curiosity, love and energy to ensure our little scholars are growing and learning each day.
We ensured each of our 500+ educators were celebrated with a gift, and gave our campuses some funds to celebrate the day whatever way they desired!
We loved seeing how varied the celebrations were amongst our campuses, but our Yatala campus's choice might've been our favourite!
Ashmore's Glow-Up
We regularly ensure our spaces are inviting, fun, challenging and reflect the needs and desires of our little scholars. In Little Scholars Ashmore's case, a parent made a suggestion that perhaps it was time to consider upgrading the playground.
So, we reached out to our Children's Council, a decisive group of our engaged kindergarten children, to get their feedback on what they liked about their playground, and what they'd like in a new playground. A process of a few months, getting feedback from children, our Little Scholars families and our educators, the new design was complete and our new playground was thoughtfully constructed by Hybrid Landscapes . We've heard the children are thrilled with the result!
Ormeau Village Children's Council
Speaking of Children's Councils, which are hosted regularly across our campuses, Ormeau Village recently held its first meeting! Tyson, Liam, Molly, Aurora, Zayd and Alyssa attended to some important business, along with Helena Vairy , educational leader, and Tash, their early childhood teacher, holding a discussion on Quality Area 2 of the National Quality Standards, 'Children's health and safety'.
The group discussed safety, asking and answering questions about what does safety mean and what helps make us to feel safe.
Leadership retreat
The leadership teams from Little Scholars and The Scholars Group came together for our annual Leadership Conference! This is one of our favourite events of the year for the leadership team and the theme this year was to “Level Up”!
We heard from some inspiring speakers on the day, including Dr. Amanda McFadden on the neuroscience of leadership and Carmelle Hedges on building high-performance cultures. Angela Lee Jenkins Jenkins also led an active wellbeing session, encouraging leaders to care for both their teams and themselves. The day ended with fun team challenges and a boat cruise at Sea World Resort!
Little Scholars Stapylton Community Day
The whole campus was on display for the community during its Community Open Day on 14 September, featuring market stalls, jumping castles, sausage sizzles, sweet treats, and even an indigenous demonstration of fire making! It was a day filled with fun, excitement, and the chance to explore all that our campus has to offer! A huge thank you to everyone who was part of making the day so special and to all who came along to join the fun!
Celebrating our team
This month, we celebrated the work anniversaries of some of our team in the support office.
Anne Blom, our dedicated administrative manager, celebrated nine years with Little Scholars. She worked with Jae Fraser , our founder, at a previous company, and when the time was right, he jumped at the chance to bring Anne to Little Scholars!
We're celebrating one year of Jennifer Haydock , our quality practice manager! Jen has brought an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience to Little Scholars. Her guidance has made a lasting impact on our educators, helping them grow and thrive individually and as a team.
Some standout moments from Jen’s first year include leading our George Street team to shine during their recent assessment and rating, resulting in an "exceeding" rating, which we celebrate as a testament to her expertise. Since Jen’s appointment last September, she has introduced new ways in how we can make children’s learning visible, and this was recognised by the Department of Education during assessment and rating.?Jen has also been instrumental in coaching our educational leaders, encouraging them to dive deeper into pedagogical research and continuously improve the quality of education we provide. She'll host our first Educational Leaders Conference in November, welcoming dozens of educational leaders from Little Scholars as well as The Scholars Group managed centres, and invite experts in the sector to speak.
We’re so grateful for Jen’s dedication and look forward to seeing even more achievements under her leadership!
Skye Ible , one of Little Scholars' regional managers, has marked four years with Little Scholars, but nearly 20 years in the early learning and care sector. We adore Skye not only because she has great attention to detail, but she cares deeply about her teams and the children they support, is always thinking of ways to bring the Little Scholars and the greater community together for great causes, and ideas to bring positivity and fun to our campuses and support office with events and get togethers.
Skye says the sector has changed for the better since she started. “People are now realising how important the first five years are for children’s development and the benefits early education has on this,” she says. “It’s always been important to me to create that positive imprint in the lives of the children who are in our campuses.”
We asked Skye what’s one thing in early education she thinks isn’t often noticed but is really important.
“How much thought, work, passion, and intentional planning goes into every detail throughout each day. From the program and learning, environment set ups and displays.”
Happy anniversary, Jen and Skye!
On the blog
Our latest article is all about mindfulness, such as how we instil these practices in our little scholars, and we talk to Annette Hartland, a yoga instructor who also happens to be a former Little Scholars educator, and finally we offer tips on meditative breathing techniques that can be used at home!
Did you know?
To meet various policies already committed to by the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments, the early learning workforce will need to increase by an annual growth rate of 3.2 per cent per year for early childhood teachers (ECTs), according to a 2024 report by Jobs and Skills Australia, or at least an additional 14,000 teachers within 10 years. Early childhood teachers run the kindergarten programs in early learning services as children begin the formal transition to prep.
However, it’s only projected to grow by 1.9 per cent, or 6,000 teachers. To implement universal access and universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds and up to 30 hours per week over three days of ECEC to be available to all children, the ECT workforce needs to grow by 5.4 per cent per year. In short, we need more passionate ECTs in our sector. The Fraser Foundation offers scholarships to deserving educators who wish to study to become ECTs, but need a little support. If you'd like to support these educators and in turn the future of children's early education, you can donate here.
That's all for our September edition of Nurturing the Future, we'll see you next month!
For more information on Little Scholars, visit our website and book a tour!