Sharing Web Resources

Sharing Web Resources
One of the outside links that I am following from “ International Step by Step Association,” is their major initiatives in 2013-2015. These initiatives will lead to Access and Equity, Quality, Participation, and Network. Here is an example:

I found that “they build on the principle that parents are the primary educators of children and strive for active parent participation and community involvement in the education process” (Major Initiatives, 2013).
The link I decided to follow from the ISSA e-newsletter related to the country of Georgia providing free preschool to children whose families qualify for welfare. I found it to directly relate to equity, for all children in Georgia’s rural areas. Though preschool education is free or subsidized for needy families, only about 30 percent of Georgia’s poor children have access, according to a November report from UNICEF.
Georgia’s rural areas are particularly lacking. UNICEF and Civitas, a civil society group, have opened 120 preschools in the countryside but gaps remain.
UNICEF has directly linked the dearth of preschool education to Georgia’s poor performance in international tests of students’ skills later on. Of 48 countries whose students participated in two standardized tests in 2009 and 2011, Georgia ranked 33rd in math and 37th in science, the agency noted.
Tinatin Khidasheli, a Georgian lawmaker, recently spoke in parliament about the importance of preschool education. But instead of expanding the coverage of preschool, she wants to make it free to all children, regardless of income.
In an interview, Khidasheli said offering free or subsidized public preschool only to needy families perpetuates social divisions.
“Socially protected and unprotected shouldn’t be an issue when it comes to children,” she said, referring to the terms used in Georgia to denote who gets state aid and who does not. “The country should take that minimal responsibility to all children, and they shouldn’t have been divided into rich and poor.
She acknowledged that many areas don’t even have preschools but said that should not preclude the government from offering free preschool where it does exist.
“Having free preschool doesn’t rule out having preschools in every village,” she said.
This link also relates to unintended consequences and objections other people may have. In response to Ms.Khidasheli statement, “Having free preschool doesn’t rule out having preschools in every village,” But it might, according to Paata Batatashvili, who oversees preschools in a district of the eastern Kakheti region. That’s because local governments will have to foot the higher tuition bill, possibly cutting into their budgets for school maintenance and construction.
Batatashvili said all of the Kvareli district’s roughly 1,000 public preschoolers get free or heavily subsidized tuition. Still, the local government manages to set aside money to refurbish one or two of the community’s dilapidated, Soviet-era preschools per year.
“Now we don’t know what it’s going to be like in the future. It’s obvious that if the preschools are free, more parents will want to put their kids in earlier and it will increase the number of children in preschool,” Batatashvili said.
He said one the district’s villages in particular could suffer. Tivi is home to a community of Avars, a minority found in parts of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Dagestan, Russian. The village has no preschool and the children there who cannot travel to a nearby village get no early education. Right now, officials plan to open a preschool there with the help of aid organizations.
This website added more information to my understanding about access and equity in early childhood education. The issue of excellence and equity is international, and not just in the United States. When I see this issue internationally I am able to see the different intentional consequences and the different unintentional consequences, and learn from them.

Major Initiatives. (2013). Retrieved from International Step by Step Association: http://www.issa.nl/issas_major_initiatives_2013_2015.html


Comments

  1. Michelle RollinsJune 16, 2013 at 12:55 PM

    Thank you for sharing the information. I really like the diagram you provided on the information relate to this weeks assignment.

    ReplyDelete

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