Proceedings of the 8th Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
[PDF]
Alternative Forms of Pre-School Education and Improving Access to Pre-School Education
Prof. Dr. Nino Kitoshvili
ABSTRACT:
Since 2010, many documents have been created in the legislation of Georgia, which regulate the preschool education process. Also, research is conducted to identify the gaps, and recommendations are made to eliminate the identified problems. Nevertheless, the shortcomings identified in the previous period in the periodic reports are still relevant, among them: the Infrastructural mismatch of the kindergarten; Inaccessibility (geographical location), the inability to meet the needs of children with special needs, qualifications of teachers, and lack of budget. To overcome the challenges in the field of preschool education and to promote preschool education, the legislative reform of 2022-2030 is in progress, which involves the systematization of kindergartens and their subordination to the standard. In the process of carrying out the reform, the bill envisages institutional support for those gardens that cannot meet the existing standard with their resources. It is worth noting that the support of kindergartens means approaching the satisfaction of the existing standard, however, it should be taken into account that only the formal form of education delivery may not be favorable for everyone. In order to eliminate similar gaps in the process of preschool education, the world practice of recent years (Serbia, Uzbekistan) talks about the effectiveness of introducing alternative forms of education and bases the effectiveness of providing alternative forms of preschool education on the study of regional needs. The purpose of the study is to strengthen the kindergartens/community in the process of legislative reform of preschool education, which cannot meet the existing standard and need alternative support. It is interesting to study the need for alternative forms of preschool education at the municipal level to create the possibility of developing targeted recommendations and support packages at the regional level. To achieve the goal, qualitative research is planned, in particular, focus groups with kindergarten teachers and administration representatives of different municipalities.
keywords: early age, early development, early education, kindergarten, research