SINCE 1994

Passionate about children achieving their potential

The McKinnon family have been providing Early Childhood Education since 1994. As a multi-generational family business, different perspectives and training backgrounds provide for well-considered leadership of the Building Futures company.

The Beginning

John and Gloria McKinnon are the founders of the accredited child care centres and although retired are still welcome visitors to the services and retain an interest as investors. John has a background in banking, and Gloria was a Primary school teacher. Vicki Ward, their daughter, has been involved since the conception of the first centre, and Derek McKinnon, their son, joined in 2008.

Adopting Montessori

Involvement in Early Childhood Education has been regarded as an enormous responsibility and privilege. Seeking innovation and best practice led to an interest in the Montessori methodology. After training in 2001-2002, the opening of the Wavell Heights centre in 2003 heralded a permanent move into offering Montessori programs as the standard for our services. Forest Lake then opened in 2006.

Growing and Expanding

The most critical aspect of providing excellence is well trained and passionate staff. Having gathered a loyal and committed leadership team, the next, and most logical step, was to ensure our staff teams could access affordable, compliant and Montessori-specific training.

Building Futures Education was developed in 2009 providing Children’s Services training and Montessori courses, including ‘Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care’, Certificate 3 in Early Childhood Education and Care’ and our ‘Diploma of Montessori Early Childhood Education’.

Finally, the Blackstone centre opened in 2013.

Looking to the future

Over the years our expertise in the industry has been utilised to support other services through Tailored Childcare Management which also offers software for the management of Child Care Benefit with the Child Care Plus program.

Building Futures anticipates future growth and expansion with the vision to make quality Montessori early education available to families across the Metropolitan South East in the years to come.

Building Futures Montessori has recently started managing Excellent Kids Montessori, at Underwood. Excellent Kids Montessori provides an outstanding Montessori based education and care program for young children aged 6 weeks – 6 years. Their centre is inviting to children; it is a calm, orderly and visually attractive environment.

Building Futures also owns and operates Building Futures Family Day Care, a dedicated and local agency helping our wonderful families around Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Safe, Smiling, and Smart

Our philosophy of shaping a child’s life and skills in all aspects, underpins all our practices at Building Futures.