KU Services
KU’s Places in 2007
* Licensed and other places
Preschools : 87
Work Based Child Care : 16
Community Based Long Day Care : 14
Family Programs : 11
Mobile Preschools : 8
AMEP : 7
Occasional Care : 5
Out of School Hours (OOSH) : 2
Vacation Care : 1
was down 4% from the previous year.
This is a pleasing result in a very competitive
employment market.
KU has a good industrial relations record
and negotiated a union collective
agreement for its clerical staff employed
in centres, which provided for the ability
to permanently appoint clerical staff
to positions in preschools. As well, the
union collective agreement that has
the coverage for the employment of
Advanced Child Care Workers Qualified,
Child Care Workers and Cooks was varied
to provide for salary increases as a result
of the Australian Fair Pay Commission
decision and to ensure that KU employees’
salaries did not fall behind the sector.
Professional Development
A key element of making “the KU
Difference” is professional development.
Well-trained staff are an essential
component of high quality early
childhood education and care and
one of KU’s strengths is our excellent
Professional Development Program
which provides a range of professional
development opportunities available
to all staff.
In 2007 KU held 151 professional
development sessions and learning
opportunities with a total attendance of
2,880. This included:
• Professional Development Program:
1284 staff attended 66 workshops.
• Additional requested sessions: 250
staff attended 8 sessions.
• Orientation sessions: 164 staff attended
8 sessions.
• KU Annual Seminar: 400 participants.
• Regional meetings: approximately 775
staff at 34 meetings.
Preschools : 2 957
Work Based Child Care : 811
Community Based Long Day Care : 673
Family Programs : 675
Mobiles : 155
AMEP : 223
Occasional Care (OCC) : 110
Out of School Hours (OOSH) : 90
Vacation Care : 20
Property Management
In visiting our centres it was apparent
to me that in some instances the quality
of our premises and equipment was
impacting on the ability of the staff to
deliver services at a high quality level.
This was especially so in preschools and in
some of our older buildings. The burden
of managing a myriad of property matters
has always fallen on our centre Directors
and Children’s Services Coordinators. Not
only is this not their area of expertise, but
it takes them away from their key role of
working with the children. To address this
we have appointed a Property Manager
and the Board has supported a major
new initiative to ensure all KU centres
meet or exceed our standards as soon
as possible. This has had an immediate
impact and over $1.5 million of works in
30 centres commenced in December 2007,
to be completed by February 2008. Capital
works and maintenance plans have been
commenced for every centre.
Finance
A number of initiatives have been put
in place to improve the timeliness of
our reporting, reduce the administrative
burden on centres and improve the
efficiency of our financial systems.
In particular we have focused on
reducing the number of cash and cheque
transactions. We have installed EFTPOS
facilities for fee payment, including an
upgrade of equipment, commenced
the rollout of internet banking for fee
payment, commenced the introduction
of credit cards for centres and are making
wider use of electronic payments.
We have also undertaken an upgrade of
the General Ledger System and improved
its integration with the centre invoicing
and payment system. Reporting and
changes to comply with International
Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS)
were incorporated into the 2006 Annual
Accounts and applied to 2007.
Information Technology
In 2007 KU migrated to the Micropay
Meridian Payroll Management System.
The major benefits were improved
payroll workflow and accuracy, as well as
comprehensive reporting, analysis and fast
responses to every day and challenging
queries. Paper based reporting was largely
eliminated, resulting in monetary savings
as well as helping the environment.
A major improvement to internet
accessibility was implemented with all
existing ADSL broadband plans at the
Centres upgraded to 1.5Mbps download
speed at minimal cost. This was a 6
fold improvement on previous speeds,
and greatly improved th e time taken
to download forms and documents
from our Intranet.
Farewells
The year was saddened by the deaths
of two long-serving and much loved KU
staff. Marcia Burgess was the Manager of
Special Education with KU and had retired
in October 2006. Robin Hallberg was KU
Consultant for AMEP. Both passed away
in June and KU and the world of early
childhood education and care are richer
for their enormous contributions and
poorer for their passing.
Sheridan Dudley
Chief Executive Officer
KU’s 112 Annual Report 2007
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