KU Burwood Preschool

39 Minna Street
BURWOOD NSW 2134
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  • Monday to Friday 8:00am - 3:30pm
Preschoolers NSW Fee Relief – Preschool

Our Program and Approach

At our centre childhood is celebrated. When they play and explore, children's imagination and curiosity is sparked – they enjoy learning, and are inspired to continue learning more.

Our play-based program intentionally provides opportunities and activities based upon the Early Years Learning Framework, for your child to discover and pursue their own interests and strengths.

We encourage children to laugh, think, question and learn. Their sense of self and confidence grows as they make connections with each other, and build warm, trusting relationships with our team.

At KU Burwood, we are proud of our reputation within the local community of providing rich education and care that concentrates on individual children in a family-focussed and supportive way.

Our centre is a welcoming and nurturing space where each child is immersed in a rich tapestry of educationally interactive experiences – a space where children are supported to be their own, unique selves, growing and developing a sense of belonging and empowerment.

Our program offers children the opportunity to engage in a wide variety of learning experiences and activities, each specifically designed to promote children’s confidence as capable, active participants in their own learning. Children are presented with a range of activities including gardening, arts and crafts, music and movement, physical play, block building, sand and water play, science experiments, early numeracy activities such as counting and measurement, and early literacy activities such as reading, drawing and writing.

We aim to establish immediate rapport and a sense of belonging in our community, as families arrive through the front door.

We greatly value the strong relationships between our staff, children and families, and we look forward to the opportunity of including your family in the life of our centre.


We Focus On

In addition to the high quality well-rounded programs we offer, all KU centres are also encouraged to develop an area of focus.

At KU Burwood Preschool, we focus on children’s social and emotional readiness for school.

We incorporate this into our program through fostering positive relationships with adults and peers, encouraging children to make choices, accept challenges, take considered risks, manage change and cope, and challenging and supporting children to engage and preserve at tasks.

In addition, we enable children to work independently or within a small or large group and acknowledge and celebrate children’s achievements and successes. Our daily practices provide children the opportunity to further develop independence and confidence with the guidance and support of educators.

We feel that the children benefit from this focus because they become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing and develop and grow as individuals.


Our Quality


Our centre has been independently assessed by the Department of Education NSW under the National Quality Standards, and are proud to be rated as Meeting the National Quality Standard.


However what matters most is what our families think...

“All of our three children have attended KU Burwood, as we believe it offers the highest quality early childhood program available. KU Burwood is a preschool that is progressive, dynamic and welcoming. It has provided our children with child-focused, play-based learning programs set in a fantastic natural environment. For us, the main point of distinction at KU Burwood was the opportunity for our children to interact and be supported by highly trained, experienced and qualified staff. All the staff at KU Burwood clearly have a passion for early childhood education and facilitating high quality, inclusive learning programs. KU Burwood is not a child minding service - KU Burwood is an education facility which has greatly assisted all my children in feeling safe, valued, creative, independent and confident about embarking on the next step of primary school.” – KU Burwood parent

“After an associated lifetime of 16 years and 7 children with KU Burwood, I feel so privileged to have started my children’s education journey with such compassionate, motivating and inspiring educators. KU Burwood has allowed all my children to grow, explore, experience and build a love of learning, through discovery and play, that could not have been established without such a uniquely tailored preschool program created to educate and inspire young individuals.” – KU Burwood parent

Our Environment

Each KU centre is unique. The best outcomes for children are created within relationships and interactions between children and staff, and children and their families, not within four walls. We work hard to create beautiful, interesting, homelike learning environments for children – whatever our setting.

KU Burwood has been open since 1970 and is a small early childhood service catering for 25 children. We are located next to Jackett Reserve in the quiet residential streets of Burwood, in Sydney’s Inner West. Our centre is housed in a council building with natural light and abundant shade provided by the many trees that grow within our playground and surrounding area.

Our playground is designed to allow children to explore nature and discover the natural environment. We want children to be able to dig in the mud, discover and learn about insects and to enjoy connecting with nature. The many activities we offer enable children to immerse themselves in the natural elements of their surroundings and feel inspired to create, imagine and play. Wherever possible we avoid using lots of fixed equipment in our playground. Instead we provide an ever-changing array of challenging and interesting activities and equipment, explored by children and educators together.

We also offer stimulating activities that arouse children’s curiosity and encourage them to choose from a variety of planned experiences, expanding their learning potential. Our playground includes natural elements such as sand, water, grass, mud, leaves and twigs, and we also offer gross motor experiences such as climbing, jumping and physical play, enhancing their overall health and wellbeing as they discover their strengths and abilities and feel inspired to create, imagine and play.


Our Reconciliation Action Plan

KU was proud to launch its inaugural Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) in 2016. At KU Burwood, we began our journey to develop our centre’s RAP in 2018 and we are proud to present it here.


Other Features

Child Care Subsidy
Designed Centre
Hat and Sunscreen
Transition to School
Public Transport
Play-based Learning
Parking
Outdoor Play
Storypark

photo of Jodie Lenton

Jodie Lenton

Director

Jodie is a university qualified early childhood teacher with over 27 years’ experience working with children. She has been working at KU Burwood since 2023.

Prior to this Jodie was a Manager of three preschools in the disability sector and was the Director/Teacher in a bilingual bicultural preschool for children who are deaf and use Australian Sign Language (Auslan) alongside their hearing peers. Jodie has a postgraduate degree as a Teacher of the Deaf and is an Auslan Language interpreter.

Jodie has an amazing passion for animals, having well over 10 animals in her care. In her spare time you will find Jodie either riding one of her horses and pampering them in the paddock.

Our Team

Our team of early childhood educators are qualified, experienced, caring and highly motivated. All hold specialist qualifications in early childhood education. We believe that the positive interactions children have with our staff are the most important component of our high quality program.

Our staff are highly experienced and most have been at KU Burwood for over 10 years. We have extensive knowledge of the local community and understand the needs of local families. We have a multi-lingual team, who offer a great variety of culture to our centre and the children.

The daily fees for 2024 at KU Burwood Preschool are:

Fee Amount
4 year old Start Strong Fee Relief fee FREE
3 year old Start Strong Fee Relief fee $26.00
Start Strong Equity Fee Relief fee FREE
Unfunded fee $96.00

Which fee will you pay?

The NSW Government is committed to ensuring that all children in NSW can participate in 600 hours of quality preschool education in the year before school, no matter where they live or what their circumstances are.

To ensure that affordability is not a barrier for families with young children, the NSW Government provides Start Strong funding making 600 hours, or 15 hours per week, of preschool participation in the two years before school more affordable. In KU preschools, this 15 hours per week is met by enrolling for two days per week.

Start Strong Fee Relief Fee (3 year olds and 4 year olds)

From 2024, the NSW government has provided additional fee relief funding, based on $4,220 per eligible child. This enables NSW preschools to reduce the daily fee as much as possible, within the Start Strong funding parameters.

This funding is for children who turn 3 or 4 years of age by 31 July in the preschool year and are enrolled in a preschool program for 15 hours per week. Across KU Preschools, the ‘15 hours’ is usually met by enrolling in two x 7.5 hour days per week.

Start Strong fee relief can only be accessed at one service, either a preschool or long day care service. This ensures as many children as possible can access affordable early childhood education.

Start Strong Equity Fee Relief Fee

The NSW government provides further funding for children who meet the Start Strong Equity funding criteria. If you think you may be eligible for Equity funding, please speak with the Preschool Director further about this.

Unfunded Fee

The Unfunded Fee is charged when a family has chosen to access the Start Strong fee relief at another community preschool or long day care service.