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‘Seychelles has made progress in early childhood education’ |22 November 2014



The Ministry of Education (MoE) organised a forum on early childhood education on Thursday as part of activities to mark this year’s Early Childhood Week.
It was the director general for schools Odile Octave who officially launched the forum held under the theme ‘A winning start in Early Childhood Education – achievements and challenges’.

Present at the launch ceremony were the principal secretary for education Merida Delcy and other invitees.
Attending the forum were early childhood education teachers and coordinators.

“Seychelles has always placed children high on its agenda in terms of provision of quality education, care and social development. In the last decade early childhood education has featured on all reform programmes under the MoE. This includes improvement of infrastructure, curriculum structure, training of teachers and resources,” Ms Octave said.

She noted that at international level Seychelles rates high in the achievement of the Education For All goals of the Unesco, in particular goal 1 - expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education.

“While we can proudly celebrate our achievements there remain a number of challenges in early childhood education. These need to be addressed in an objective manner by all concerned in order to ensure further development in the field,” she said.   

The forum, held in the Ministry of Education’s hall, was led by the senior curriculum programme officer Elva Gedeon.

“Seychelles has made a lot of progress in early childhood education and the forum’s objective is to outline the progress made in terms of the curriculum, teachers, resources and access to education. But we are also here to outline the weaknesses that we have so that we can further better the early childhood education in Seychelles. So this forum will permit us to discuss the pertinent issues affecting early childhood education,” she said.

She added that “the schools are facing a lack of teachers to teach at early childhood level and we also have a lack of resources. This week we are emphasising on learning through play, and toys are something that we lack; we need to give enough toys and teach teachers how to create local toys and even get new partners on board to contribute towards early childhood education”.

“Recommendations from the forum will be taken into consideration when the Medium Term Strategy Action Plan is implemented next year as we need to make sure that what we propose and what we implement respond to our schools’ needs,” Ms Gedeon said.

During the forum those present got an overview of early childhood education history in Seychelles from Ellen Basset, an early childhood educator.

 

 

 

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