FIVE YEAR PLAN - IN THREE YEARS

EDUCATION

The concept of “pre-school education” was first heard at the end of last year, when Minister Andrei Fursenko presented the Concept for the modernization of Russian education. This term is common all over the world, but our traditions are closer to the concept...

The concept of “pre-school education” was first heard at the end of last year, when Minister Andrei Fursenko presented the Concept for the modernization of Russian education. This term is common all over the world, but our traditions are closer to the concept of “education of children of senior preschool age.”

Experts say that the enrollment of children in preschool education is falling catastrophically. As a result, according to calculations by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development, the Russian economy annually loses 16-20 billion rubles. These calculations are based on the fact that preschool education ranks third (after higher and primary) in terms of influence on a child’s success in adulthood.

“There is a so-called sensitive period,” explains Igor Remorenko, deputy director of the department of state policy in the field of education of the Ministry of Education and Science. - The age when children can achieve a certain development that cannot be achieved at another age. If this development is not achieved, then the child is unlikely to be successful in his career in the future.”

Recently, so-called school preparation groups have been widely developed - short-term groups working at schools or institutions of additional education or even at universities. By law, a preschool institution can choose its own program for teaching children. There are high-quality methods, but there are also quite a few that try to get ahead of events and work with children according to the elementary school curriculum.

According to Elena Kravtsova, director of the Institute of Psychology. Vygotsky, several years ago they conducted a comparative study among students in grades 6–9 in various Moscow schools. As it turned out, those who started school at the age of 6 are in many ways inferior to seven-year-olds, even at the 9th grade level.

Proper preparation should focus on play activities, physical, physiological and psychological development of the child. For example, the development of fine muscle motor skills. After all, the lack of this skill entails not only big problems with writing, but also in the formation of oral speech. Other, no less important abilities that need to be developed in a preschooler are the ability to listen, speak, communicate among others like themselves, and organize their activities.

Due to the lack of uniform rules, children come to primary school with reading and writing skills, and at the same time, 70% of them do not have the ability to organize their activities, 60% have insufficiently developed speech, and 35-40% have insufficient motor skills.

The Ministry of Education and Science hopes to change the situation, whose specialists promise to present recommendations on methods of education for children of senior preschool age by the end of the year. The main objective of the recommendations being developed is to create conditions for equalizing the starting opportunities of children from different social groups and segments of the population. Thanks to their implementation, it is planned to cover 70% of children in the country as a whole with pre-school education by 2008.

One of the most important points in the MES project is the development of recommendations for the introduction of a mechanism for differentiated payment for a child’s stay in kindergarten. A similar scheme is already being tested experimentally in three constituent entities of the Russian Federation: Moscow, Novgorod and Samara regions.

Another is the expansion of short-stay groups. At the moment, there are only 3.2 thousand such groups among 47.8 thousand preschool institutions.

The recommendations of the Ministry of Education and Science will not have legislative force, so the question of motivation arises. Children's institutions that listen to the recommendations of the Ministry of Education and Science will be able to apply for additional funding from the budget. Moreover, the implementation of the recommendations of the Ministry of Education and Science will not require significant financial costs. According to Remorenko, drawing up recommendations for the regions will require no more than 1 million rubles. Naturally, the implementation of the developed programs may require additional, but also insignificant, expenses - since 2007, about 3 billion rubles from the budgets of the regions of the Russian Federation.