Parents Responsible Outside Kindergarten

Press, Volume C, Issue 29623, 20 September 1961, Page 2

Parents Responsible Outside Kindergarten

Concern for the safety and welfare of small children has prompted the Christchurch Free Kindergarten Association to enforce the rule that parents must take full responsibility for their children outside kindergarten gates.

Kindergarten staff members are no longer allowed to meet children along the street, escort them across roads, put them on or take them off buses.

‘•With so much traffic about it is essential that children be supervised all the way from their homes to the door of kindergarten,'* said the president of the association (Mr A.- F. Johnson) yesterday. This Was the responsibility of parents—not of kindergarten teachers or bus drivers, she said.

Although no accidents to children going to kindergarten or returning home have been reported to the Christchurch association, enough

•‘near misses” have happened to cause anxiety. “Parents are required to sign a form when enrolling a claild for a kindergarten accepting responsibility for it going to and from kindergarten. We have been condoning parents’ putting children on buses without escorts and we have been expecting too much of our staffs by letting them, out of kindness of heart, take grave responsi-

bilrty,” Mrs Johnson said. “It was a bad practice and it had to be stopped.”

Christchurch is the last of the major associations in the New Zealand Kindergarten Union to enforce the rule. Inconvenience Some Christchurch mothers do not like the regulation. They say it is inconvenient to take a child to kindergarten every day and call for it again, particularly if there are younger children or babies in the family. Mrs Johnson said that mothers in other centres took it in turn to escort a group of children from the same neighbourhood to kindergarten. By co-operation Christchurch mothers should also be able to overcome any inconvenience and help each other this way. Although kindergarten staffs have been willing to take children across streets and to bus stops, they have done so to their own disadvantage. Often, .by the time they have put the last

groups of about 40 morning pupils on buses and returned to kindergarten to prepare for the afternoon session, there is no time for any lunch before they have to set out to meet the next contingent. A Safeguard The enforcement of the regulation is also necessary to safeguard the association in case of accidents to children. The organisation’s insurance policy covers only any accident arising from proven negligence of any member of the staff in the course of her duties within the kindergarten gates. “The safety and welfare of the children is our primary concern. But if an accident happened to a child at the kindergarten while teachers were crossing streets with other children to prevent road accidents, we would be liable for the child at the school. A voluntary organisation, like ours, must also consider this aspect,” Mrs Johnson said.