The challenges for early childhood educators in Sri Lanka

Shanthi Wijesinghe

Education: Early childhood is a crucial stage of life in terms of children's physical, intellectual, emotional and social development and of their well-being. Growth is both rapid and differential.

A significantly high proportion of learning takes place from birth to the age of six. It is a time when children particularly need high quality care and learning experiences. Practitioners and educators must provide a comprehensive range of services for young children.

An integrated early years education (where a ratio of 1:10 disabled kids are allowed) and childcare provision will make a positive contribution to children's early development, enabling them to build on this foundation throughout their lives, so providing a sound basis for lifelong learning.

What is an Early Childhood Programme?

It is definitely NOT only a glamorous setting. It should be clean but look used as well. Not a cover version of a picture book. The aim is to work with children and their parents to promote the development of preschool children - particularly those who are disadvantaged - to ensure that they are ready to thrive when they get to an education facility.

The period from age three to six is described as the foundation stage. It is a distinct stage and important both in its own right and in preparing children for later schooling.

Who is an early childhood educator?

The early learning goals set out what is expected for most children by the end of the foundation stage.

Primarily they are motivated practitioners, not chair-warming money collectors. Their contribution to the development of the child is through updated and upgraded effective learning and developing new activities for young children.

Encouragement must be given to young men and women who want to pursue this field as a career. Higher studies in ECD and Child Psychology are widely available around the world.

Development of a quality-based curriculum

Parents have a right to know whether the programs offered are purely didactic, teacher-directed programs or "discovery" models. A mixture of both produces superior cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Our research has shown that children from any background learn equally well - if presented in innovative ways.

How PARENTING programs and the COMMUNITY can help:

Although certain specifications are given, no parent wants their child to fall back due to lack of knowledge.

Therefore they push the preschool educator beyond limits to ensure their child is ready for academic education from Grade 1. Brain development has shown the world that children are capable of many forms of learning. They have the capacity to learn languages as well as social skills, order and behaviour.

However, of these only language and number skills are sought by parents while governments have insisted that these are the least expected! At the receiving end of this tug-of-war is the child.

Parents need correct information and guidance through an authority which can be linked to the functions of Primary education.

The challenges - The Implementation Process

The fact that early education has been relegated to elderly matrons, housewives and unsuccessful candidates at public exams and even school drop-outs is a fact that has been unresolved from the time of our Independence.

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Fact File: Things we know already know but care less

* A child has already developed half of his total adult intellectual capacity by the time he is 4 years old and 80 percent of it by 8 years. After the age of 8, regardless of what type of schooling and environment the child has had, his mental abilities can only be altered by about 20 percent.

* The more new things a child has seen and heard the more new things he wants to experience. The greater the variety of environment stimuli with which the child has coped, the greater is his capacity for coping in adult life.

* One of the most important physical developments during early childhood is the continuing development of the brain and nervous system. Although the brain continues to grow in early childhood, it does not grow as rapidly as in infancy. By the time children have reached 8, the brain is 3/4 of its adult size.

* A child's personality is completely formed for better or for worse by the time he/she is 6 years old. Whatever damage is done during this time it can never be rectified after this age.