More than half a million preschoolers have been provided with educational facilities including in towns, villages, and deprived regions across the country.
As schools bear the onerous task of providing children with “social capital of a lifetime,” preschool is of great significance and must be attended by all children, Rokhsareh Fazli, director of preschool department at the ministry of education, was quoted as saying by ISNA.
“So far 667,000 kindergarten students are attending classes including 146,000 in rural areas and 35,500 in deprived regions, bringing preschool coverage to 51.9 percent, a 13.7% increase from the previous year,” Fazli said.
Multilevel classes are held in sparsely populated regions where preschoolers join the first graders of primary schools. “Such classes are mostly held in bilingual regions as students have difficulty speaking Farsi,” Fazli noted, adding that so far 5,400 multilevel classes have been organized for more than 20,000 students in addition to 108,000 bilingual students who attended summer school this year (ends March 20).
Preschool education is usually offered by private organizations in affluent regions. “Public awareness is very important and families must realize the necessity of nursery school education so that private preschools can expand in big cities thus helping government to allocate more financial resources to more deprived regions.”
Fazli said 12,000 guide books for preschool trainers were recently distributed free of charge, and 127 educational modules will be produced for preschools around the country. “The implementation of educational reforms will be non-centralized and organized by each province,” she added.
Assessment
“Integrated management is high on the agenda of the ministry of education and no service regarding care, health, or education will pay off without nurturing kids, and all organizations in respect to children’s education, be it municipalities or social media, must work based on certain principles set by one key supervising unit.”
She further said the School Entry Assessment Plan was implemented experimentally early this year for 90,000 four-year-olds to go through specialized screening. Kids evaluated for special intervention are receiving it as of Esfand (February 20).
Fazli said the private sector is responsible for the high tuition fee in certain regions, and the ministry has “reduced the rent of schools to a minimum to ensure lower tuition costs; however, no legal action has been taken in this regard and a number of preschools have been given warnings.”
Preschool is a non-mandatory two-year educational course for children of four years of age in accordance with the national education plan.
