Belarus: early childhood care and education
By Deepa Grover, Regional Adviser Early Childhood Development, UNICEF CEE/CIS
Hilchitsy is a small and relatively poor village. The weather-beaten timber cottages look old and tired. Many residents of the village, especially young people, have left to seek a better future in the big cities. Those who have stayed behind continue to cultivate potatoes and cucumbers, the main agricultural produce of the region. Families in Hilchitsy are small – the majority have only one or, at most, two children. This reflects a trend across Belarus where the fertility rate has fallen to an alarming all time low of 1.2 children per family. In total, there are only 12 three- to six-year-olds in this village; 12 children who until a few months ago had little to do other than to stay at home and wait to start primary school. The village is too small and the children too few to run a regular kindergarten service. A Family Kindergarten But then something happened in April this year. The local education authorities in Gomel, encouraged by the Ministry of Education and UNICEF, decided that Hilchitsy would be an appropriate location to set up a Family Kindergarten. Anna Kovalee, 29, who lives in the village, was a trained but out-of-work school teacher with two young children of her own. When approached by the authorities, she said she would be delighted to offer her home as a place for play and recreation for the pre-schoolers. There were a few problems though: first, she hadn’t worked with very young children; second, she didn’t have any appropriate educational materials or play equipment for the youngsters; third, her house did not have suitable furniture for small children and, finally, there was no running hot water – a critical necessity during the cold months.
With some discussion and planning these problems were quickly overcome. The local authorities arranged for Anna to have her teaching skills improved with a short course in early childhood care and education. They also supplied her with a variety of books, toys, games, and stationery material with some funds from IKEA and a small contribution from UNICEF. Two small tables and six little chairs transformed her living room into an early education classroom. The bathroom was renovated and there was running hot water round the clock. How about outdoor play for the children? Here the village community got together and with contributions of wood and loving labour – a see-saw, a climbing frame, a sand pit and a picnic table were installed under the leafy trees in Anna’s garden and, most important of all, a gate with a child-safety latch was fixed at the entrance. A lick of happy sky-blue paint on the outside walls of the house completed its transformation into a Family Kindergarten. We are greeted at the door by Anna’s smiling mother – the kindergarten’s Babushka. She leads us through a small front hall and reception area into the kindergarten living room. Anna is inside with the children, some of whom are working animatedly on a jigsaw puzzle. One leafs through a book. Another one is playing with a soft toy. They see us and greet us with a lusty chorus of “Dobre-din!” (Good afternoon). The children look at us with friendly curiosity and in a few seconds return unprompted to their various activities. “The children love it here,” says the Hilchitsy teacher’s babushka, “they feel that they are at home. Their parents are happy because they can leave their children with someone they trust, in a place that is safe and pleasant and because their children are learning things. My daughter is happy because she can work and be with her own children and earn a proper salary.” Learning through play The children attend the kindergarten for five days a week. They come in two groups of six - one group in the morning and one in an afternoon shift. Each shift lasts for three-and-a-half hours. Anna is aware that her transformed home provides an important service to the village. She knows that children with pre-school experience make a smoother transition to school, are more confident and curious, learn better, and adjust quickly to children and adults in the primary school environment. Attending kindergarten allows them to use some of their most valuable years to develop a variety of cognitive, social and emotional capacities which lay strong foundations for future learning and development. Because the children in her small class are of different ages, Anna makes individualized learning plans for each of them. Lots of fine and gross motor movement and storytelling for the three- to four-year-olds, and a greater emphasis on pre-literacy activities for the five- to six-year-olds. But everybody gets to play – indoors or outdoors; individually or collectively; in structured or free situations. Play, she knows, is the medium of education par excellence for pre-schoolers. New flexibility in pre-school planning The setting up of Family Kindergartens like this one in Hilchitsy was made possible by the introduction in 2005 of new regulations on pre-school education in Belarus. At around 80 per cent, the rate of pre-school attendance in the country was the highest in the CEE/CIS region, however the authorities were aware that the out-of-pre-school young children who mainly live in scattered and poor rural communities were the ones who would benefit most from some early education. However, given the economies of scale it was impossible to provide regular kindergartens to each and every community – many of which have fewer than 10 or 15 pre-schoolers. As in other CEE/CIS countries, the relatively rigid – and often cost-inefficient – Soviet-style kindergarten model dominated the provision of early learning. The new regulations have introduced into the arena of pre-school education the previously unacknowledged principle of “flexibility.” According to this concept it is the right of every child to be developmentally ready for school and it allows for a variety of early educational arrangements that, without compromising quality, allow for the fulfilment of this right. Family Kindergartens are one such arrangement. Clearly this is a win-win-win situation!
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