Playcentre philosophy is based on the ideas of child-initiated play and parents as first educators.

Playcentre is an early childhood education service, run as a parent co-operative, which commits to the following in order to ensure the quality of early childhood education in each session:

• learning through play
• birth to school age
• mixed ages sessions
• family involvement
• other policies and philosophies as decided by the annual national conference.

Because sessions are run as a co-operative, parents meet out of session to share experiences and information about the children, and meet the business needs of an early childhood centre. Decisions are usually done by consensus, to ensure all members feel heard and understood. Everyone is expected to take responsibility for something, depending on their capabilities and availability.

We are very proud of the excellent quality of our adult education programme and attendance in it is an essential component of being a Playcentre parent. This ensures we meet the requirements for licensed and chartered centres and more importantly, parents learn how to run sessions within Playcentre philosophy.