Auckland Kindergarten Association turned 100 years old

Left to right - Robin Houlker (ECE advisor), Eileen Bethel (AKA life member), Sue Crockett (AKA life member), Marj Fogarty (AKA life member), Denise Iversen (AKA life member), Dr David Barney (AKA life member), Edna Munro (AKA life member).

The Auckland Kindergarten Association (AKA) turned 100 years old earlier this month.

One hundred years to the day since the AKA was established its president Jeremy Drummond says the traditional kindergarten model of the past century is set ‘to become a range of different models’.

On a day when 450 gathered for a ‘centennial celebration’ on the 8th October, Mrs Drummond said the ethnic diversity of many Auckland kindergartens would have been ‘unimaginable’ when the AKA was inaugurated on 08 October 1908.

The early Auckland kindergartens were mono-cultural, she said, “while today 87 per cent have seven or more languages spoken, and some have up to 35.”

The traditional kindergarten of the past 100 years, with morning and afternoon sessions, was set to ‘morph’ into a variety of models tailored to meet the different needs of different families, Mrs Drummond said.

“We already have kindergartens focussed on the needs of ethnically diverse communities. We already have three all-day “KINZ” centres for all kinds of parents with paid employment. And we will soon be creating “school-day” centres that offer 9 to 3 education and care alongside our traditional morning and afternoon sessions.”

Mrs Drummond said the association would retain the traditional sessional model where that was what families needed. But it was likely a range of new models would evolve in the coming years.

Those who started the AKA in 1908 had been determined to serve the needs of what they called ‘the slum population of Auckland’, she said.

That was why they built the first kindergarten in Freemans Bay, then one of the poorest parts of the city. And for 100 years the AKA had never turned away a child because parents could not afford to pay a donation.

Mrs Drummond said the AKA was ‘a tough little organization’ that had educated many hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders.

It had started with 60 children in a single kindergarten, but was today the largest pre-tertiary education provider in NZ, educating 14,000 a year in 107 kindergartens and three all-day KINZ centres.

The AKA was confident of its survival were the current financial crisis to turn into the depression that some were fearing, she said.

It had already weathered a world depression, two world wars, kindergarten closures due to flu, measles and whooping cough epidemics, and periods when government subsidies had been withdrawn completely. And it is likely be around to complete a second century in 2108.