Our vision is to continue the dream of the founding members of St Andrew’s Kindergarten to create a preschool that nurtures and values children and brings families and the community together.

Our mission is to provide a high-quality educational program putting children’s learning and well-being at the core comprising of three inter-related elements: Principles, Practice and Early Years Learning Outcomes.

We value all children as unique individuals and promote and demonstrate equity and diversity across all aspects of our program and service delivery continuing to develop and customise the program each year to meet the needs of all children attending our Kindergarten.

We believe in acknowledging the Indigenous people as the first people of this country. We acknowledge the local Wangal Clan who are one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the community. We will actively teach the children the important role of indigenous people both past and present and their connection to country, through stories, songs, visuals and incursions. We will welcome and engage in collaborative partnerships with Aboriginal people and organisations.

We prioritise being a child-safe organisation, ensuring that every child’s health, safety, and wellbeing are central to our practices. This commitment underpins our policies and daily interactions, creating a secure space where children feel valued and empowered.

We believe each child has the right to be an individual and feel important and we will ensure that all children have positive social contact to enable them to build rewarding relationships and connections in a ‘belonging’ environment.

We believe that by valuing, celebrating and honouring diversity and creating an environment of acceptance of each person and their family’s values, culture, beliefs, abilities and language, will benefit everyone.

We believe that play is essential in the lives of young children. We believe play values the ideal of ‘being’ and recognises the importance of early childhood. We believe play should be fun, exciting, spontaneous, hands-on, stimulating, relaxing, comforting and challenging. We believe it is important to provide opportunities for children to experiment, discover, explore, create, investigate, practice theories, solve problems and express ideas with the support of other children and educators in an indoor-outdoor setting. We believe in celebrating children’s play through reflection and meaningful discussion, documentation and for all children to have the opportunity to share their work and ideas with their peers.

We believe in promoting the growth of knowledge, skills and values regarding the environment and sustainable practices with children, families and the wider community through our curriculum and everyday principles and practices, so individuals become empowered to make lasting and meaningful change.

We believe each child is capable and resourceful and we will encourage and support individual learning styles for all children to enable them ‘becoming’ full and active members of society. We will provide long uninterrupted periods of time for play and facilitate small and large group times using principles and practices such as scaffolding, intentional teaching by trained educators, drawing on theory and building respectful partnerships. Our goal is for all children to develop positive learning dispositions and skills across all areas of the curriculum such as: physical, cognitive, language, emotional, social and creatively through drama and art and with a focus on the use of natural materials such as clay, water and sand.

We believe in supporting and developing a partnership with families to share the nurturing and education of their children. We encourage each family to participate in the preschool community and support and welcome their interest and involvement.

We believe our community are the children, their families, the educators and all the people and services the preschool has made connections with since our establishment by Rev. Sam Lee’s in 1973. Our special relationship with St Andrew’s Anglican Church is reflected on our management committee, through the teaching of Christian values at bible time and through the spiritual support available to families by the proximity and availability of the Church, the Minister and its members in our environment.