School’s still in for some senior Moranbah State High School students who will work in after-school child care during the Christmas break.
Up to eight senior students will be working through the holidays at the Bright Kids child care centre in Moranbah, as part of their supervised traineeships in early education.
Bright Kids – a partnership between Moranbah State High School P&C, Simply Sunshine Child Care and Arrow Energy – opened earlier this year to provide the trainees with practical experience while alleviating Moranbah’s critical shortage of after-school care for children.
Based on its success so far, Bright Kids will open over the Christmas school holidays – 16-20 December, 13-17 January, 20-24 January.
“We’re doing vacation care for three of the six weeks,” Bright Kids coordinator Karen Grey.
“We’ll be open 8am to 5.30pm, so it’s a step up from the after-school hours we’ve been doing.
“A couple of the educators [school-based trainees] are going away but we have some of next year’s starters on board.
“Already, we have an average of 20 children a day booked in for the holidays and we have a waiting list as the word spreads.”
Bright Kids is run under Moranbah State High School’s vocational training scheme, M-STEP – Moranbah Senior Training and Education Programs. It allows senior students to gain vocational qualifications while still at school.
Five Year 11 students signed on for Early Childhood traineeships in 2013. They studied the course theory at the school, with a registered training organisation from Mackay, and then work at Bright Kids for their practical experience.
“Right at the beginning, they were nervous, but that was at the beginning,” Mrs Grey said.
“They’re well aware of the national standards, the legal implications, the confidentiality requirements.
“They’re quite confident and quite competent.”
Four of the 2013 trainees will continue in 2014 (the fifth is moving to Perth). They will be joined by more trainees from the incoming 2014 Year 11 students.
“Next year, there’s definitely two more starting, maybe up to four,” Mrs Grey said.
Arrow’s Moranbah-based community officer, Kathleen Cush, said the project was a practical outcome to a great community need.
“It addresses a critical shortage of age-appropriate after-school and vacation care for children in Moranbah, including for Arrow staff,” Ms Cush said.
“It also provides valuable work experience and learning opportunities for senior students who are about to enter the workforce.
“We see it as a very worthwhile use of Arrow’s community investment efforts.”
Arrow’s community investment program, Brighter Futures, supports local, not-for-profit groups on projects that build community capacity in health, safety, education and environmental awareness.
This year, Arrow invested more than $4.6 million in 117 community projects across the state.
Media contact:
Bright Kids
Karen Grey
Phone: +61 455 868 857
Email: [email protected]