Narooma Preschool wins Vocational Excellence Award

Narooma Preschool has been awarded a Vocational Excellence Award by Narooma Rotary Club, in recognition of the preschool’s initiative in developing an authentic local Indigenous curriculum unit in association with the Yuin community.

It was not only the creation of the program which gained the attention of the Rotary Club, but also the generosity of the preschool in sharing their work with 20 other early childhood services in the area through a teaching kit and other resources. 

Creating and sharing the kit is a point of some pride for preschool director Kathy Phipps, who described the work as “a huge undertaking,” with lots of discussion along the way about how best to meet the Department of Education’s mandatory requirements of an Indigenous unit authentically, and with local relevance.

“Thanks to our staff, particularly Kate Heffernan, we were able to involve wonderful resource people from our local Yuin community, especially Trish Ellis, Natalie Bateman and Eddie Moore,” she said.

“The unit tells traditional Yuin stories and incorporates the local Dhurga language, thanks to Trish and her sister Kerry, which our staff have been learning through TAFE.”

Around one third of the preschool cohort have a First Nations background, however all children attending have enjoyed the resources and artwork in the kid. 

20 early learning services in the local area were gifted basket trunks of unique storyboards, books, artifacts and other teaching materials, and the preschool is now working on a PowerPoint to suggest to other centres how they might best use the material.

Narooma Preschool’s unique program was funded by a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealth Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.

Local media coverage of this story is available here.