ASC counts three preschool years - the year children are 3 years old (ELC-1), the year they are 4 (ELC-2) and the year they are 5 (ELC-3 / Kindergarten). ELC-1 and 2 enrolment is by half or full day and ELC-3 is full day only.. Families must transport their students of this age. The bus service begins at age 6.

English and Arabic speech are established as early languages of the bilingual or multilingual child in our Early Learning Centre and specialist teaching methods are used to direct other aspects of our students' learning and especially to develop their love of learning.

The Director of Education lays out the school's educational philosophy in her message linked in the column to the left and gives a broader idea of where our students' preschool education leads.

Our Early Learning Centre shall be a school in every way. Our present notion is that each group of 20 students shall be lead by a certified Australian teacher with specialist training in teaching very young children. That lead teacher will be a native speaker of English as will be the class's envisaged teaching assistant.

Under present plans, there will also be two "nannies" for each class of 20 ELC students. The nannies will be Egyptian women aged about 18-25 who will be there to supervise the children's play, to take care of them when they need to be understood and talked to in Arabic and to do other such things as nannies do. Teaching the students the Arabic alphabet, for instance.

In addition, specialist early childhood English language teachers from Australia shall work with individual and small groups of our ELC students so our students are properly learning the sounds and pronunciations of English from their earliest preschool days.

So each group of 20 ELC students, as presently envisages, will have five "teachers" - the two full-time Egyptian nannies to supervise their play and care in an Egyptian way, the native English speaking teaching assistant, the native English speaking, Australian certified lead teacher who will take overall responsibility for their learning, and the English language specialist who will work with individual and small groups of students from each class during parts of each day. In fact there will be more teachers who will work with the ELC students - the music teacher, for instance.

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