The students who have been staying in Lithgow for the past three weeks together and have one more week left are in their second year of their masters degree and fifth year of University. 

The preschool, which takes 40 students a day and servicing 82 families, is benefiting from the students being in the classroom with the kids. 

"For the first three week we have been doing screening assessments and then we will do group or individual therapy for the last week," student Minu Perera said.

The university students screen the children for around 20 minutes looking for speech issues or alerting them to any struggles the children may have. 

"We will complete full assessments and write any in depth problems, but most of the kids are happy to participate," student Amanda Godbee said. 

According to the students the children have been enjoying the one on one attention, and having time to chat. 

The children screened are between the ages of two and five with the students having screened 57 children over the course of three weeks. 

The students had never done screening before in a pre-school but enjoyed the new experience. 

"It's great to be able to look at different kids and observe how they interact in play, because in a clinic its in one setting," student Kailey Mamone said. 

The students volunteered to come out to do a rural placement, not knowing if they would end up in Lithgow or Orange. 

"We already do like five placements in the city so we thought it would be fun to do something different," Miss Perera said.  

"It has been a great learning experience." 

The students spoke of the benefits and the disadvantages of having parents with the children while being tested. 

"The good thing with parents is that having them there means they can fill in any missing information we need, and they could entice any shy children who might not want to talk to us to come forward," Miss Godbee said. 

"But also some children might just cling to their parents and not interact with us, and sometimes parents might interrupt the session." 

According to the students, hearing is one of the common reasons speech can be affected. 

"If they can't hear the sounds then they can't produce them, so if a child cant hear us when we are screening them we will ask for a hearing test," Miss Mamone said. 

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Ms Van Den Berg said the preschool enjoyed the program because it was a holistic way to do assessments. 

"We will have a referral process if something comes up, but unfortunately that means there is a waiting process," she said. 

Ms Van Den Berg said that the need for speech pathologists in the area was at an all time high. 

This is the second year the preschool has undertaken the program having seen the success from the first year of the program.  

"It is such a long process but us getting this done in the first term speeds up that process, but it still isn't fast enough," she said. 

Ms Van Den Berg said it was frustrating for the school because the longer some children sit without their speech being addressed the harder it becomes for them. 

With no private specialists in the area many children were not receiving the help they may need.  

Bathurst clinic worker Alyce Wright said that she has found she travels to Lithgow and Portland a lot because there isn't a speech therapist in the area.  

"There is such a long waiting list it's ridiculous," she said. 

Ms Van Den Berg said they hope to run the program again next year if it is in the budget. 

"It would be nice if there could be speech pathologists in every preschool," she said. 

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