Why Edge Hill
A day with a shape to it.
Sunbird is a 74 place long day care and kindergarten on a quiet Edge Hill street, with four rooms, every meal cooked in our own kitchen, and a native garden the children plant, water and pick from.
We opened Sunbird in February 2016 in a low timber and glass building three streets back from the gardens end of Edge Hill, because that is the part of Cairns we live in and the part where parents kept telling us there was nowhere to put a one year old. Renae had spent eight years teaching kindergarten and two more directing a large centre in the southern suburbs. Josh was running a commercial landscaping crew and had built half the playgrounds she kept borrowing ideas from.
The turning point was a year at that old centre when the roster was cut back to the legal minimum. The ratios were met on paper every single day, and Renae still spent most of her time covering breaks, nappy changes and lunch runs instead of being in the room with children. Meeting the minimum and actually being present are two different things. So Sunbird was built around a roster that carries one educator above ratio through the middle of the day, from about half past nine until half past three, which is when the gap used to show.
The rest of the place grew out of questions children asked. The water channel in the courtyard came from Josh and a pile of decking timber after a kindy group spent three weeks pouring water down a gutter. The herb bed came from a four year old who did not believe basil grew in dirt, and it now feeds the kitchen most weeks. Wendy joined us as cook in 2018 and threw out the frozen supplier list in her first fortnight. The wet season in 2023 put water through the car park and taught us to keep a proper indoor wet weather program instead of improvising with the television.
We are a small provider with one service and no plans for a second. Renae is the nominated supervisor and is here most days by a quarter past six. Josh does the books, the maintenance list and the mulch. We publish our fees for the whole year in January, we tell you which educator is with your child, and if you ask a question about ratios or subsidy we will give you the number rather than a brochure. That is the whole pitch.
What we believe
- Ratios held in practice, not just on the roster
- Plain answers about fees, subsidy and staffing
- Outdoors every day the weather allows
- Food cooked here, from a menu families can read
What is actually different here
Five things we point to instead of an adjective.
- One educator above the required ratio in every room from mid morning to mid afternoon
- All four meal services cooked on site by our own cook, with no extra charge
- Fees, closure dates and the menu published for the full year each January
- An approved kindergarten program taught by a registered teacher inside the long day
- Nappies, wipes, sunscreen, bed linen and the first sun hat included in the daily fee
Care, play and connection
A second film, if you want to see more of an ordinary day.
This is the same building, the same rooms and the same educators, filmed on another day. Play it if you want to; it is not the one on the front of the site and it does not start itself.
Regulation, in plain words
What the National Quality Framework means day to day.
Approved provider and service approval
Sunbird holds a service approval under the Education and Care Services National Law and Regulations, administered in Queensland by the state regulatory authority. That approval covers our staffing, our physical environment and our policies, and it can be checked.
Assessed and rated
Every approved service is assessed against the National Quality Standard, across seven quality areas from educational program to governance, and given a public rating. We will show you our current rating on a tour rather than describe it in our own words.
What the rating does not tell you
A rating is a snapshot from an assessment visit. It will not tell you whether the educator rostered on a wet Tuesday next March is any good, which is a fair question and the reason we would rather you visit on an ordinary day than read a certificate.
Meet the people who lead the rooms More on ratios and regulation
