The Victorian Government is making extra resources available to kindergartens to help children learning at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Deputy Premier and Minister for Education James Merlino today announced $900,000 in grants for new programs and extra staffing at kinders not yet receiving funding through the $160 million School Readiness Funding initiative.

The package will enable kinders to access to the Goodstart@home online platform – which contains high-quality play-based learning activities for parents to do with their children at home – as well as free professional learning webinars for early childhood staff to help deliver programs remotely.

Kindergarten services can also use the funding for additional educator and teacher hours to develop and deliver learning from home programs – given teachers and educators who are delivering a program on-site have limited capacity to work with families and children who are not attending.

The funding is designed to allow Kindergarten services to select a package of resources that best reflects what their families need to help with learning from home.

The Australian-first School Readiness Funding initiative has been rolled out to 32 local government areas already, and provides funding to improve children’s language development, social and emotional resilience and support access and inclusion.

These resources are in addition to what is already been available on the Government’s tailored early childhood Learning from Home website, which was launched in March in light of lower-than-usual attendance rates, to help teachers and educators support children to learn remotely.

Early childhood education and care services in Victoria are continuing to operate, in line with advice from  Australian Health Protection Principal Committee. The Victorian Government is also providing up to $45 million in extra funding to support sessional kindergarten providers in Term 2.