The government for the first time is going to introduce pre-primary education formally in all government primary schools from next January.
Children above five years will participate in the one-year-long pre-primary education course and will learn basic knowledge through playing with their peers in a joyous environment.
“The pre-primary education will be introduced in all government primary schools from next January. It will help reduce school-phobia among the kids as well as create interest about education,” said Abu Alam Mohammad Shahid Khan, secretary of the primary and mass education ministry.
“The kids will come to school, play with their peers and get the basic learning. Gradually, a tendency to go to school would grow among them,” he told The Daily Star recently.
The primary and mass education ministry has already taken initiative to recruit over 37,000 teachers for the pre-primary course, he said.
This would be the first formal start of pre-school education in country’s 37,672 government primary schools though privately run schools including NGO-operated educational institutions already offer such schooling across the country, ministry officials said.
It is one of the major initiatives of the government, which has been taken as part of the implementation of National Education Policy 2010 that reads, “This preparatory education with other kids together would be helpful for creating interest among the children about education.”
A majority of children in rural areas do not get the opportunity to have a preparation for primary schools at homes as a large number of their guardians are illiterate, the ministry officials said.
School-phobia grows among the kids when they start attending the primary school for the first time and this makes them disinterested in attending the school, they said.
Such disinterest is the reason behind drop out in primary schools, they added.
The ministry officials believe the pre-education would attract the kids to school and help reduce the drop out rate.
The preschool would also prepare them for the primary education and encourage them to stay in the school, they observed.
Regarding teacher recruitment, the secretary said, “The establishment ministry has already given their nod in this regard and we have sent the proposal of recruitment of teachers to the finance ministry for approval.”
The teachers would play major role in this purpose, as they have to become very intimate with kids to keep their interest in school besides teaching, said Shahid Khan.
The existing primary schoolteachers would take the classes of the pre-primary section if the entire recruitment process does not end before next year, said ministry officials.
The government has also taken initiative to publish reading materials for the preschool children, said Mohammad Fashiullah, deputy director of Directorate of Primary Education.
The classes of preschool education would be quite different than the usual classes, as the kids would learn rhymes, identify alphabets and numeric, and other fundamental things, he said.
The government has a plan to build separate classrooms for the pre-primary education in all primary schools, Fashiullah added.
