Universal Pre-Primary Education: A Comparative Study

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Table 1 shows that the most required babies center is at Dhaka division and the less is at Sylhet according to the population density. The Government estimated average 25 children attend a pre-primary center. As a result 88,804 centers have to need to provide pre-school education to all children aged 5 to below 6 years.

Table 2. Division wise Pre-Primary Centers Run by Three NGO's and UNICEF Funded Projects.

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Table 2 shows that BRAC-BEP is doing at pre-primary school with 20,226 centers through Bangladesh which is the large figure than all other NGOs. UNICEF funded project is running with 2,483 centers which is implemented by Bangladesh Shishu Academy in collaboration with Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board, City Corporation, Save the Children USA with 2,096 centers and Plan Bangladesh with 375 centers. Besides, the estimated number of kindergartens is 18,000-20,000 (Eighteen to twenty thousand) all over Bangladesh which are run privately. But district-wise data is not available (Source: Mr. Nuruzzaman Kayes, Secretary General of Kindergarten Association).

Table 3. Division wise services school and students in baby class through Bangladesh.

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In the above, the Table 3 shows the division wise information of the students and the schools of baby class within Government primary school, Registered non-Government primary school (NGPS), Non-registered NGPS, Ebtadaee Madrasa, Kindergarten, NGOs, Community, Attached to high Madrasa and attached to high School all over the Bangladesh. These institutions serve their schooling in baby class of 1,101,395 students with 26,299 centers throughout Bangladesh. The NGOs and kindergartens are doing positive role in pre-primary school but not adequate.

4.1. The strategy of pre-primary education in Bangladesh

In recent period Bangladesh faced various problem, one of them is to overcome universal pre-primary schooling. In spite of several problems Bangladesh has been trying to develop pre-primary sector. For this reason in March 2008 the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education of Bangladesh run a programme through a Operational Framework for Pre-primary Education. The framework has been taken some strategy to develop pre-primary education such as creating building or centers, supervising and monitoring those centers, providing teachers in pre-primary sectors etc. The recommendation of the framework is the centre will be set up either in a primary school or in a separate house having at least 250 square feet space for 20-30 children. Ideally it should be located inside or adjacent to existing primary schools. This arrangement will facilitate interaction between pre-primary teachers and primary school teachers and thus transition (enrolment) of 100% children from pre-primary schools to primary schools, in disadvantaged areas where existing primary schools may not be available close to children's home, the location of pre-primary center may be in a suitable place agreed by the community ^[5].The another recommendation is every center will be managed by a separate 7-9 members. The formation of the Center Management Committee (CMC) for pre-primary education centers will be as follows:

i. Head teachers of the concerned primary school or nearby primary school /Chairman.

ii. Representative from implementing NGOs/Member selected two members (one male and one female) from SMC /Member.

iii. Two representatives from the parents/Caregivers (at least one member would be female) /Member.

iv. Teacher of the pre-primary education center /Member Secretary. The committee may co-opt two additional members.

The framework also recommends to improving pre-primary education to supervision and monitoring the centers. Supervision and monitoring mechanism and procedure will be developed cooperatively with the service-providing NGOs. The service-providers will take a major responsibility for supervision and support to the pre-schools. Supervision objectives and focus and monitoring tools and methods will be determined collaboratively under the sponsorship of the central pre-primary unit at DPE. The upazila education office and the upazila resource center will be involved in the supervision and monitoring process, without overburdening them and taking full cognizance of their primary education responsibility. Training and staff development of the personnel involved in supervision and monitoring will be undertaken by the service providing organizations following guidelines developed collaboratively with them ^[5].

4.2. Pre-Primary Education in India

The National policy on Education 1986 ^[6] and its Plan of Action ^[7] have placed massive importance on pre-school in India. The Ministry of Women and Child Development deals with pre-primary education. The Government of India launched the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in 1975. The Department of Women and Child Development has been implementing the scheme which seeks to provide health care facilities, supplementary nutritional support and to improve children’s communication and cognitive skills as a preparation for entry into primary school. Initially the programme started as a project in some States but presently it covers many rural and tribal areas along with some urban pockets targeting mainly underprivileged children.

In India, pre-school education is provided by private schools and government ICDS (Anganwadi) centers. In addition, there are some ECCE (Early Childhood Care and Education) centers running under SSA (Sarva Siksha Abhiyan) and some pre-schools are attached to government as well as private schools. According to the estimate given by the Seventh All India Education Survey (NCERT, 2005), there are 493,700 pre-primary institutions in India, out of which 456,994 are in rural areas. These schools serve 26.453 million children of which 12.829 million are girls ^[2]. The percentage of enrolment in primary schools with pre-primary facilities is low. It was 10% in 2007-08 compared to 7.7% in 2004-05. The highest percentage of pre-primary enrolment in primary schools is in Madhya Pradesh (19.6%) and the lowest of 5.0% in Bihar ^[11].

Table 4. The area wise pre-primary institution in India

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Above the Table 4 shows that more pre-primary institution are servicing at rural area. It means the Government of India put emphasis on rural and underprivileged children who are deferring from various public facilities. It’s another meaning that most illiterate and unconscious parents live in rural area.

4.3. Pre-Primary Education in Argentina

Argentina is a developing country. But perhaps they are more advanced in pre-primary school all over the developing countries in the world. Pre-primary education became compulsory in 1993 in Argentina ^[1]. The public school system in Argentina provides 3 years of pre-primary education covering ages 3 through 5. Pre-primary classes are almost always physically and administratively attached to primary schools. They typically operate two shifts (morning and afternoon) each for three and a half hours a day, five days a week over the 9 month school year. According to Ministry of Education (1993), pre-primary education was intended to achieve two goals ^[14]:

1. Enhance educational achievements accomplished at home and develop new age appropriate competences.

2. Early access to knowledge and skills that improve performance in the first years of primary education.

In order to achieve these goals, the curriculum was explicitly designed to develop:

a) communication skills,

b) personal autonomy and behavioral skills,

c) social skills,

d) logical and mathematical skills and

e) emotional skills ^[14].

Though pre-primary education is compulsory in Argentina but there are not enough physical spaces in pre-primary classrooms to accommodate everyone immediately, the law allowed the Government to phase in implementation over time ^[10]. To implement the law the government began a massive public school construction from 1993 to 1999 where the National Government financed the construction of 3,531 rooms. On average, each room was 45 square meters constructed at an average cost of $15,000 pesos. Given an average class size of 25 students and 2 pre-primary shifts (i.e., 50 new places per room constructed), the construction programme created approximately 176,550 pre-school places ^[13]. We refer readers ^[13] and ^[14] for more information regarding this issue. To create new class rooms government of Argentina is trying to solve the problem of accommodation.

4.4. Pre-Primary Education in Nigeria

Nigeria is a country, which is endowed with many languages as there are different ethnic groups who use the languages. Possibly there are more than two hundred and fifty ethnic groups with a conservative estimate of four hundred languages ^[12]. So called Nigeria is a “nation of nations”. The country consists of several ethnic groups with unrelated languages. Most often, the pupils have acquired the mother-tongue through the informal educational system before they start primary schooling and they use the languages simultaneously in communication. It is universal truth that a child acquires his first language involuntarily and most unconsciously from random exposure first to his parents and second to his community, even if no attempt is made to teach him ^[4]. In order to ensure a smooth transition from home to school, the National Policy on Education stipulates the use of indigenous Languages of the child’s environment in the pre-primary and early primary education. The pre-primary level, as described by the National Policy on Education is that stage aged three to five years which prepares the child for primary school ^[16]. It has clearly outlined some objectives for pre-primary level which are as follows:

i. Effecting a smooth transition from home to the school

ii. Preparing the child for the primary level of education

iii. Providing adequate care and supervision for the children while their parents are at work, on the farm, in the market places, offices etc.

iv. Inculcating social norms. Inculcating in the child the spirit of enquiry and creativity through the exploration of nature and the local environment, playing with toys, artistic, music activities, etc.

v. Teaching numbers, letters, colours, shapes, forms, etc

vi. Teaching habits especially good habits.

To achieve these goals, government’s strategies for implementation of the pre-primary education programme are as follows:

i. Encouragement of private efforts in provision of pre-primary education

ii. Provision of training programmes for teacher’s specialization in Early-Childhood Education.

iii. Ensuring the use of the mother-tongue as the medium of instruction in pre-primary schools.

iv. Developments of the orthography of many Nigeria languages

v. Production of textbooks in Nigerian languages

vi. Ensuring the use of play approach in teaching at the pre-primary school level

vii. Regulation and control of operation of pre-primary schools.

Perhaps the condition of pre-primary level of Nigeria is very poor among our study. Though their objectives and implementations strategy is good looking but the Government of Nigeria only performs a supervisory and regulatory role. Because of Government has no direct investment in the pre-primary level. So the owners charge high fees. These can only be afforded by a few privileged parents, which are very crucial in the educational development of a child ^[8].

4.5. Pre-Primary educations in EU

Immigration has been and will continue to be a main feature of European societies and may be this is the main problem to universally pre-primary access in EU. Migrated people may be qualified or non-qualified. Their socio-economic statuses are not parallel with native people. There is evidence that universal access to high quality pre-primary education can be particularly important for reducing inequalities. Various factors create saloon the universal access of children to pre-primary education such as the educational attainment of parents, the difference between the language spoken at home and the language of instruction at school, and the socio-economic status of parents. It is renowned that parental education is therefore important for children’s educational performance. Parents can read to young children and help them with homework. In five EU countries — Spain, Ireland, Italy, Malta and Portugal — about 40% or more of fathers of children aged 3 to 6 years obtained only lower secondary education or less. The other major challenges facing European education and training systems is to compensate for any differences in pupils’ backgrounds which could place certain groups at a disadvantage ^[3]. In spite the various difficulties some EU countries have been made them universal access in pre-primary school to unravel all troubles such as France, Italy and Belgium.

EU is trying to develop their education and training system. So, their public and private investment in education is most high. Denmark, Sweden and Cyprus allocate nearly 7% of their GDP into public investment in education. These are the highest levels in the EU and among the highest in the world. Japan (3.5%) and the US (4.8%) trail the EU (5%) on public investment. However, they both have much higher levels of private investment in education than any Member State. Although private investment in education is increasing in the EU, it is only significant in four Member States (the United Kingdom, Germany, Cyprus and Slovakia). For these, it reaches up to 17%, still well behind Japan and Australia (25%), the United States (30%) and Korea (40%) ^[3].

Table 5. Best performing countries in pre-primary sector and investment status in education in EU and other first countries.

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