The Significance of a Home/Preschool Liaison Teacher in a Community Preschool

Extract

The Carpentaria Kindergarten is the Community Preschool Centre at Normanton, in north-west Queensland. It was established in 1970 under the auspices of the Anglican Church with financial assistance from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Canberra. Of the fifty children enrolled approximately 80% are of Aboriginal descent. All children in the town are encouraged to attend after their third birthday. The younger children attend three afternoons a week, while the older children attend five morning sessions a week. In most cases children have two years of preschool education before they enter the primary school.

The preschool is an instrument of integration in this community which has a 50% Aboriginal population. It is recognized that the principle of community integration is based on the movement of different types within a community together, with each group making a real contribution. Consequently the Aboriginal people must not disappear in a process of absorption, but move into the total community with a definite identity. The preschool plays a very real and definite support role in this process of integration in the following ways: