Global History

As a nation, we all know that the quality of our preschool system needs its improvements and fixes, but how do other countries fair? How does Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East go about, on quality preschool education? We will take a look at several countries around the world, and see how they have started and how far they have come in their quest for preschool education.
We will first take a look at the preschool education system in and around Asia. In China during the 1980’s, preschool education was expanded in, and the government had set basic standards for preschools. The new laws covered the preschool system, the number of students allowed per class, required teacher qualifications, minimum standards for facilities, and financial penalties for violations. According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), 232,610 children attended 3,005 registered preschools in 1999. Of the registered schools, 1,160 were public schools, and the remaining 1,845 were private. Registered kindergartens accommodated 24.01 percent of the three- to five-year-olds eligible for schooling. Another 261,442 children attended 2,754 nursery schools, raising the total enrollment to 51 percent for this age group. Nevertheless, the preschool enrollment rate is still much lower than the 80 to 90 percent found in many developed nations.
As I was looking for other Asian countries, i came across some interesting countires. Lets look at countries like Japan. if you compared Japan and China, the latter is looked upon as a lower quality education. At the moment Japan is in the grip of a boom in preschool English learning. Parents, frustrated at the slow pace of change in the preschool education system, are exposing their children to English before they can even walk. They are dead serious about their children getting ahead of everyone else. (1)“A recent survey by Benesse Corp, which runs a chain of language schools, found that 14% of households with children of preschool age sent their offspring to English lessons.” Parents are not satisfied that their children are not really learning any English in preschool. They regard the present preschool system now more of a day care center than a school. And thus they want change. Some parents have long regarded English skills as crucial to their child's chances of entering a top university and embarking on a career in medicine, law or the upper echelons of the central government bureaucracy. But the rise in the number of private playschools and preschool English courses offered by private language-school chains is meeting demand from parents whose ambitions, they say, go beyond academic success. In a way to sort of wrapping things up here, preschools in Japan may be a bit harder for the kids than anywhere else.



Moving on to Europe, we will take a look at Italy, one of the countries that our nation sets its standards by for quality preschool education. Preschool programs are seen as a right of citizenship for all children three to five years of age and Italian society expects all children to attend. Where there is a shortage of state-owned spaces for children, the state sponsors private centers. In the northern more industrialized parts of Italy, there is an abundance of preschools due to the demand of working mothers. A powerful women's movement in the mid-1960s brought about significant change to the role of women and the rights of children in Italy. (2)“Historically, a woman's primary purpose was to produce children; yet, she had no legal claim to them if her husband died. Women were viewed as abandoning their children if they went to work.” By the mid-1970s, family leave policies, maternity and infant legislation, publicly-funded child care, preschools, and equal pay in the workplace had been implemented as a result of the movement.
Reggio Emilia's late founder and director, Loris Malaguzzi, captured the essence of Italian preschool programs by saying: (3)"We continue to be convinced that without attention to the central importance of teachers and families, our view of children is incomplete; therefore, our proposition is to consider a triad at the center of education -- children, teachers and families" (1993). For the past 25 years, the city of Reggio Emilia in northern industrialized Italy, has committed 12 percent of the town budget to the provision of infant/toddler centers and preschools. This small community of approximately 130,000 people has 22 preschools and 14 infant/toddler centers.





One of the Middle Eastern countries that offer preschool systems is Turkey. There are not many middle eastern countries that really offer quality preschool programs, but in Turkey, preschool education, which is optional, includes the education of children in the 3-5 years of age group. These children are not forced to attend preschool. Preschool education is given in kindergartens, preparatory classrooms, application classrooms, day nurseries, nursery schools, day-care homes, and child care homes by various ministries and institutions. The children can benefit from these institutions for a full day or a half day, or which ever the families can afford. Families pay a certain amount to have their children benefit from preschool education. Many of the children that are able to attend the preschools are privileged and are some of the lucky ones.



In South Africa, preschools seem hard to come by, but they do exist. About only a decade after democracy, South Africa appears to spend more on keeping convicted criminals in their cells than on keeping children off the streets and in preschool. Prisoners cost the South African taxpayer about 17 dollars a day, every day of the year. In contrast, babies and toddlers who attend formally-registered preschools get a direct financial support from the Department of Social Development which averages out at just under 70 cents for every one of the country’s 195 school days. Depending on which of South Africa’s nine provinces is administering the grant, some children get as little as 37 cents – others up to 92 cents. At most, only 17 out of every hundred young children in the country have access to any kind of preschool. (4)"Access to early childhood programs has clearly demonstrated an improvement in school performance, yet the Department of Education spends less than one percent of its budget on early childhood education," she says. Nearly a quarter of children under the age of five are stunted due to long-term malnutrition. Even though funding can prove problematic, preschools offer critically-needed food, safety and mental stimulation that can seldom be provided by overworked, under-equipped and ill-educated caregivers at home.
In conclusion, there are many problems that each country faces when it comes to improving their preschool systems. All countries have their own ways with dealing with their problems, and I think that it may be a harder road for some more than others. Countries in Africa and the Middle East need much improvement, while Europe, Asia, and the US are pretty much set, if not for some minor improvement that can be fixed. All in all, we should be happy with the preschools that we do have here, and by looking at this information, we should all strive to better education not only in our country, but in many others as well.




1. http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/story/0,,523682,00.html
2. Hellman, J. (1987) Journeys Among Women: Feminism in Five Italian Cities. New York: Oxford University Press

3. New, R. (1994). Reggio Emilia, Lecture at University of Victoria Leadership Institute in Child Care. Victoria B.C.

4. http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/s_africa.asp



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