This visit provided me with the opportunity to meet and talk with a range of people including parents. I was taken to the preschool on North Stradbroke Island and met with parents and the staff from the preschool program. The community meeting included both Indigenous and non-Indigenous parents. I gained a sense of the importance of the local community in providing a preschool program that was responsive to family needs and how effective a local community program could be with staff and parents working together. The responses from parents reflected great levels of satisfaction with their preschool program. I particularly noticed the strength of the relationship between the parents and staff of the program. Discussion did include issues related to transporting children to preschool programs and how this at times posed difficulties for parents. In relation to the Terms of Reference of the inquiry, access to programs is a fundamental consideration for all children, regardless of their geographic location or transport needs. Transition from preschool to school seemed to work effectively for children and families in this community as the relationship between the school and preschool was clearly established.

The majority of discussions I had with people in Queensland, including with representatives from universities, government representatives, teachers and principals, concerned the issue of the significant change in Queensland to introduce a Prep year into the school community. A number of prep classes were being trialled this year and during 2003. The evaluation of this trial, whilst complete, has not been released by the government and therefore I am at this point unable to comment on the program as it relates to children and families.

Teachers I visited who are trialling the program appeared positive but did mention issues including: the lack of a teacher aide for the majority of each day, the inability to spend as much time talking with parents at drop off and pick up times due to not having an aide on the site at these times, the possibility of less time to plan and the increase in planning required to run this type of program.

The introduction of a prep year is of particular interest to me in the role of inquirer and relates to a number of issues related to equity and access of children in relation to a preschool year as well as the nature of the program itself.

A number of issues were raised in my discussions including:

• The reduction of hours for the preschool teacher aide in the prep program.
• The lengthening of the session from 3 hours to full days, five days per week.
• The nature of the curriculum itself The resources and equipment required.
• Whether prep programs would end up in regular school classrooms without the traditional play ground areas and early childhood equipment

The terms of reference for this inquiry examine whether all children have the opportunity to access a high quality preschool program.

With the introduction of the prep year to replace the preschool program, a number of issues related to equity and access will be interesting to follow. I await the release of the evaluation of the trial program with great interest and hope those results will be released before the final report of this inquiry is due to be launched in May this year.