The stud has come on board with sponsorship of a new education program at Murrurundi Public School named  the “Aquis, Future Is Bright Pre-Kinder Program”.

Relieving Principal at Murrurundi Public School Rebecca Hopkins says the goal of the program is to prepare student’s numeracy and literacy skills for Kindergarten before they even start.

“I approached the Operations Manager at Aquis, Garry Isaac, and they were very interested to support us and asked me to come up with a few ideas,” she said.

​“This was the one that they were most interested in.” 

The program will begin in Term 4, which runs from Monday October 15 to Friday December 21, and will supply a qualified teacher one day a week to work one-on-one preparing students for Kindergarten. 

“Students will need to be enrolled here for 2019 to be able to participate in the program,” Ms Hopkins said.

“It will be a normal school day from 9am to 3pm with the teachers. Sometimes they’ll be spending time in the K1 classroom other times they will spend time one-on-one, building their numeracy and literacy and their school readiness skills.

Ms Hopkins says the extra support is something that a school the size of Murrurundi Public School normally couldn’t afford.

“To put another teacher on for a whole day costs about $450 a day,” she said.

“So normally they would either just be a few days in the class for a few hours with the teacher trying to juggle them and their normal class. In this case that won’t be an issue”. 

It’s the first time that the school has had a qualified teacher to prepare Kindergarten students one-on-one and also the first time that Aquis has come on board with Murrurundi Public School.

Aquis says they are “delighted to be sponsoring the program”.