• Willagee Labor MP Peter Tinley with the Kulunga kindergarten community: He wants the closure reversed.
The Barnett government will close a 50-year-old Aboriginal kindy in Hilton next year after parents failed to enrol their children in time.
Based at Hilton primary school, Kulunga has met its enrolment quota for at least eight years. The Herald understands the kindy has 16-18 kids, with more wanting to enrol for next year.
Parents say they didn’t know the new deadline was July 26.
P&C president Sarah Rule says parents are “shocked and dismayed” by the news.
“To enforce this deadline is contrary to past practice and the understanding of many local Aboriginal families,” she told the Herald. “Many families of four-year-olds were intending to and expecting to be able to enrol their children at Kulunga for 2014.
WA education department early childhood chief Garry Hewitt says the kindy can re-open in 2015.
“It is not viable to run the Kulunga kindergarten program for next year with no confirmed students,” he told the Herald. “However, this does not mean [it] is closed permanently.”
The kindy can reopen the following year subject to there being sufficient demand.
Jacinta Miller says the school had “helped her kids a lot”.
“My daughter came here and my older son did as well and I was hoping my baby would come here too as he’s three soon,” she told the Herald.
“It’s a close-knit community. I speak for a lot of people who bring their kids here and the next lot of their children who will come here.
“Some of the teachers here have taught their parents so it’s really going to hit close to home. It’s really affecting the parents and the kids.”
Local elder Marie Thorne has been involved with the kindy since it started: “I’ve had my great-grandchildren come here and my great-great-grandchildren were going to,” she says, sadly.
WA Indigenous affairs shadow Ben Wyatt says the closure will result in Aboriginal kids missing out on early education.
“The school has provided a culturally sensitive approach to early years education and the reality is if it were to close, some of these children will not attend mainstream kindergarten.
“This is a particularly insensitive decision at a time Colin Barnett should be investing more resources into Aboriginal education, not taking them away.”\Willagee Labor MP Peter Tinley, who grew up in Hilton, says it makes no sense to, “shut an institution like this right in the heart of Hilton”.
“You have a 50-year-old plus kindy that provides care for, let’s be clear, some of the most vulnerable kids in our the community, who have been dispossessed generation after generation from a range of opportunities.
“The bottom line is the government doesn’t fund three-year-olds in kindy. I get that. But for the past 50 years that’s occurred here.
“So what they are saying now is, you can’t make your quota of 20 kids then were not going to fund it, therefore it’s going to close.”
Hilton ward councillor Sam Wainwright says Fremantle needs more quality initiatives for Aboriginal education, not fewer.
“Concern is growing that the state government may be looking to close Hilton primary school itself,” he says.
“This would be a real setback.
“Great things are happening at these places and Hilton cannot afford to lose them.
“I think the resolve in the community is strong—we are simply not going to let the state government rip the guts out of Hilton.”
by BRENDAN FOSTER
Why do people have to blame the Government because they stuffed up. Its not up to the Government to enrol your child, it is up to you. So sick and tired of people not taking responsibility for their own lives. Stop it people! Be accountable for yourself.
I don’t think the Kindy should be closed but Richard W’s point is hard to counter. If as the report says, people didn’t enrol because the enrolment date wasn’t widely known and publicised then the decision should be revisited but if not…… People have to be accountable; enrolling by an advertised date doesn’t seem to be a big ask.
I think every parent is well aware of the difficulties of securing places in Day Care Centres, Kindergartens, Primary and High Schools.
It’s a bureaucratic assumption that just because a deadline/date is advertised that it reaches its audience. To do it effectively requires communications people not policy makers. Happens all the time in many fields at all levels.