Preschool education

Nursery school near Baroda, Gujarat, India

Preschool education is the provision of education that focuses on educating children from the ages of infancy until six years old. The system of preschool education varies widely, with different approaches, theories and practices within different school jurisdictions. Preschool educational programs are sometimes refered to as nursery school, day care or kindergarten. While pedagogies differ, there is the general agreement that preschool is responsible for providing education before the commencement of statutory education.

History

In the 19th century, several European educators, Robert Owen of Great Britian, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi of Switzerland, Friedrich Froebel in Germany and Maria Montessori of Italy began to develop educational systems designed for early childhood in the hope of actively helping children during one of the most crucial stages in human development. Robert Owen was responsible for creating the New Lanark, a character school for young children, most of whom were from he poor workers in Owen's cotton mills. His school was succesful, and spurred similar institutions in England. It was Froebel who came up with the term kindergarten and to create a kindergarten school. Froebel believed that man was given almost limitless potential from God and saw kindegarten education as a means to start the process of realizing such potential at an early age. His cirriculm focused on giving children the freedom to discover their abilities and personalities without forcing pre-determined self-images upon them, developing creativity, language and social skills.

Similar programs became popular in Europe and later in America. While the German idealism and Christianity aspects that Froebel and other early preschool educators were not as popular in secularly run education systems, nonetheless the core principals were widely understood and beneficial to helping child development and a more educated public. However, it was not until the mid-twentieth century that pre-school systems became systemized on a wide, multi-national scale, and incorporated into regionally governed education systems.

Philosophy

File:Baby exploring books.jpg

Infant playing with a book.

Early childhood education (ECE) is a pedagogical approach covering the education of children from the period from birth to six years of age.of the experience to which the adult gives attention.

The philosophy of early childhood education is largely child-centered education. Therefore, there is a focus on the importance of play. Play provides children with the opportunity to actively explore, manipulate, and interact with their environment. It allows children to experiment with the world around them and the emotional world inside them. To many it might seem like mere child's play but there is a lot of work going on behind the scene like skill building, problem solving, overcoming physical and mental challenges etc. Playing with products made especially for the preschool children helps a child in building self confidence, encourages independent learning and clears his concepts. For the development of their fine and large or gross motor movements, for the growth of the child's eye-hand coordination, it is extremely important for him to 'play' with the natural things around him. It encourages children to investigate, create, discover and motivate them to take risks and add to their understanding of the world. It challenges children to achieve new levels of understanding of events, people and the environment by interacting with concrete materials. Hands-on activities create authentic experiences in which children begin to feel a sense of mastery over their world and a sense of belonging and understanding of what is going on in their environment. This philosophy follows with Piaget's ideals that children should actively participate in their world and various environments so as to ensure they are not 'passive' learners but 'little scientists' who are actively engaged.

Baby being put on a keyboard by its parents

There are different developmental domains of children which all relate to each other:

• Physical development - Concerning the physical growth and the development of both gross(eg. walking) and fine motor(eg. finger movement) control of the body.
• Perception and sensory development - How a child functions using the senses and the ability to process the information gained.
• Communication and language development - Using visual and sound stimuli, especially in the acquisition of language, also in the exchange of thoughts and feelings.
• Cognitive development - Concerning how the individual thinks and react.
• Emotional Development - Concerning children's increasing awareness and control of their feelings and how does he react to these feelings in a given situation.
• Social Development - Concerning the child's identity, their relationship with others, and understanding their place within a social environment.

A wide array of educational philosophies circulate through the field in regards to how best promote healthly development in these areas. Some professionals adhere to more of a behaviorist theory as developed by John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner and Edward Thorndike.Others hold to the more unstructured maturationist theory popularized by Jacques Rousseau and Maria Montessori. Additionally, stage theories such as those of Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson are used to look at social and emotional development. Most current early childhood teacher education programs teach a mix of theories dominated by the constructivism (learning theory) theory as put forth by Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky.

Day Care

Day care or child care can overlap with preschool in providing early childhood education, to children whose families use long day care to allow the parents to work. Many child care centres in Australia provide preschool and kindergarten early childhood education services.

Sawara-nursery-school, Katori-city, Japan

The day care industry is a continuum from personal parental care to large, regulated institutions. The vast majority of childcare is still performed by the parents, in house nanny or through informal arrangements with relatives, neighbors or friends. For example, in Canada, among two parent families with at least one working parent, 62% of parents handle the childcare themselves, 32% have other in-home care (nannies, relatives, neighbours or friends) and only 6.5% use a formal day care center.

Where the market is sufficiently large or there are government subsidies for daycare, for-profit corporate day care exists. In North America, Bright Horizons Family Solutions is one of the largest such companies. It is a publicly traded company operating over 600 daycare centers. The Australian government's childcare subsidy has allowed the creation of a large private-sector industry in that country. ABC Learning Centres is a publicly traded company running about 1000 daycare centres in Australia and New Zealand and another 500 in the USA. Another factor favoring large corporate day cares is the existence of childcare facilities in the workplace. Large corporations will not handle this employee benefit directly themselves and will seek out large corporate providers to manage their corporate daycares. Most smaller, for-profit day cares operate out of a single location.

The geographic limitations, and the diversity in type of daycare providers, make child daycare a highly fragmented industry. The largest providers own only a very small share of the market. This leads to frustration for parents who are attempting to find quality child daycare, with 87% of them describing the traditional search for child daycare as "difficult and frustrating"^{[citation needed]}.

Non-profit day cares have some structural advantages over for-profit operations. They may receive preferential treatment in rents especially if they are affiliated with a church that is otherwise unoccupied during the week, or with a school that has surplus space. Location within a school may further bring the advantage of coordinated programs with the school and the advantage of a single location for parents who have older school-age children as well. Parents are typically the legal owners of the non-profit day care and will routinely provide consulting services (for example accounting, legal, human resource) for free. Non-profits have an advantage in fund-raising as most people will not donate to a for-profit organization. Non-profits, however, are typically limited in size to a single location as the parent-owners have no motivation to manage other locations where their children are not present. They may suffer from succession issues as children grow and parents leave the management of the day care to others. Local governments, often municipalities, may operate non-profit day care centers.

Home day cares are operated by a single individual out of their home. This is often a stay-at-home parent who seeks supplemental income while caring for their own child. Local legislation may regulate the number and ages of children allowed before the home is considered an official day care centre and subject to more stringent safety regulations. Some home day cares operate illegally with respect to tax legislation where the care provider does not report fees as income and the parent does not receive a receipt to qualify for childcare tax deductions. As home day cares do not pay rent, they are typically less expensive than day care centres. Home day care providers may still be certified like more organized daycares.

Franchising of home day cares attempts to bring economies of scale to home day cares. A central operator handles marketing, administration and perhaps some central purchasing while the actual care occurs in individual homes. The central operator may provide training to the individual care providers.

For all providers, the largest expense is labour. In a 1999 Canadian survey of formal child care centres, labour accounts for 63% of costs and the industry had an average profit of 5.3%. Given the labour intensive nature of the industry, it is not surprising that the same survey showed little economies of scale between larger and smaller operators.

Local legislation may regulate the operation of day care centres. The legislation will define what constitutes a day care (so as to not regulate individual baby sitters). It may specify the physical facilities (washroom, eating, sleeping, lighting levels, etc). The minimum window space may be such that it precludes day cares from being in a basement. It may specify the minimum floor space per child (for example 2.8 square metres) and the maximum number of children per room (for example 24). It may mandate minimum outdoor time (for example 2 hours for programs 6 hours or longer). It may mandate staffing ratios (for example 1:3 for under 18 months, 1:5 for 18-30 months, 1:8 for over 30 months, and even higher ratios for older children). Legislation may mandate qualifications of supervisors. Staff typically do not require any qualifications but staff under the age of eighteen may require supervision. Typically, once the child reaches the age of twelve, they are no longer covered by day care legislation and programs for older children may not be regulated.

In Canada, the workforce is predominantly female (95%) and low paid, averaging only 60% of average workforce wage. Many employees are at local minimum wage and are typically paid by the hour rather than salaried. In the United States, "child care worker" is the fifth most female-dominated occupation (95.5% female in 1999).

In non-profits, the title of the most senior supervisor is typically "executive director", following the convention of most non-profit organizations.

There are often local industry associations that lobby governments on childcare policy, promote the industry to the public[5] or help parents choose the right daycare provider.

Nursery School

A nursery school is a school for children between the ages of three and five, staffed by qualified teachers and other professionals who encourage and supervise educational play rather than simply providing childcare. It is generally considered part of early childhood education. In some jurisdictions the provision of nursery school services is on a user pays or limited basis while some governments fund nursery school services.

Advantages

In May of 2007, Slate Magazine published an article discussing the results of a working paper by Nobel Prize winner James Heckman of the University of Chicago and Dimitriy Masterov of the University of Michigan about the social and economics benefits of nursery school, claiming that more investment in children at an earlier age is needed to supplement the role of the family.

The reasons given include the importance of early years in cognitive development, the trouble many families have in providing adequate early-childhood nurturing, and the advantage such programs give students starting the next step in their education. The study considered a number of early childhood educational pilot programs for at risk children, similar to Head Start, but more intense, such as the Perry Project in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Over 40 years of the children's lives, participants showed greater literacy, higher grades, greater likelihood to graduate high school, higher post-high school employment rates, higher earnings, less need for welfare, committed less crime, and had lower rates of teen pregnancy. The rate of returns to the children was estimated to be 16 percent (about 3/4 of this is calculated from the decreased social cost due to lower crime and less prison spending).

The authors also propose that the return on investment declines with age. This study is significant because it advocates spending as an economic investment in a societies future, rather than in the interest of justice.

Cultural Variants

Kindergarten on the Ministry of Agriculture in Afghanistan

United Kingdom

In the UK, pre-school education in nursery classes or schools is fully funded by the government and is generally available to children aged over three. Pre-school education can be provided by childcare centres, playgroups, nursery schools and nursery classes within primary schools. Private nursery education is also available throughout the UK and varies between structured pre-school education and a service offering child-minding facilities.

England and Wales

Each child in England and Wales, aged three or four, is entitled to five two and a half hour sessions per week. This entitlement is subsidised by the government. Pre-schools in England and Wales follow the Early Learning Goals for education produced by the Department for Education and Skills which carries on into their first year of school at the age of four. This year of school is usually called Reception. The Early Learning Goals cover the main areas of education without being subject driven. These areas include

• Personal, social and emotional development
• Language, literacy and communication
• Mathematical development
• Knowledge and understanding of the world
• Physical development
• Creative development

Scotland

In Scotland children are entitled to a place in a nursery class when they reach their third birthday. This gives parents the option of two years of funded pre-school education before beginning primary one, the first year of compulsory education. Nursery children who are three years old are referred to as ante-pre-school whilst children who are four years old are termed pre-school. Pre-school education in Scotland is planned around the document "A curriculum framework for children 3 to 5," which identifies learning intentions around the following five areas of development:

• Emotional, Personal and Social Development,
• Communication and Language,
• Knowledge and Understanding of the World,
• Expressive and Aesthetic Development,
• Physical Development and Movement

Responsibility for the review of care standards in Scottish nurseries rests with the Care Commission.

United States

In the United States, nursery school is provided in a variety of settings. In general pre-school is meant to develop children through planned programs.

Pre-school is defined as: "center-based programs for four-year olds that are fully or partially funded by state education agencies and that are operated in schools or under the direction of state and local education agencies".

Pre-schools, both private and school sponsored, are available for children aged from three to five. Many of these programs follow similar curriculum as pre-kindergarten.

Head Start program

The goal of Head Start and Early Head Start is to increase the school readiness of young children in low income families. These programs serve children from birth to age five, pregnant women, and their families. Head Start was started by the Federal Government in 1964 to help meet the needs of disadvantaged pre-school children.

The office of Economic Opportunity launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965. It was then transferred to the Office of Child Development in the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1969. Today it is a program within the Administration on Children, Youth and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services. Programs are administered locally by school systems and non-profit organizations.

• Services provided by Head Start

1. Disabilities - All programs fully include children with disabilities
2. Education - The goal of Head Start is to ensure that those children enrolled in the program are ready to begin school. Activities are geared towards skill and knowledge domains.
3. Family and Community Partnerships - both groups are involved in the operation, governance and evaluation of the program.
4. Health - Health is seen as an important factor in a child's ability to thrive and develop. The program provides screenings to evaluate a child's overall health, regular health check-ups, and good practices in oral health, hygiene, nutrition, personal care, and safety.
5. Program Management and Operations - "focus on delivering high-quality child development services to children from low-income families."

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Steve Biddulph, author of Raising Babies: Should Under 3s Go to Nursery? ISBN 0-00-722192-4
• Herr, Judy. (2002). Working with Young Children. Tinley Park, Illinois: The Goodheart-Willcox Company, Inc. ISBN 1-56637-822-2.
• Meisels, Samuel J. (1995). Performance Assessment in Early Childhood Education: The Work Sampling System. Urbana, Illinois: ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

External links

• Montessori Preschool Information
• Los Angeles Universal Preschool
• Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (UK) – Guide to the Foundation Stage
• BBC Parenting Information pages about nursery school in the UK
• Early Years information at Learning and Teaching Scotland
• Office of Head Start (US)
• Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center

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