Government to pay greater attention on kindergartens

Deputy Minister of Education for women Noura Al-Faiz said the ministry planned to pay greater attention to preschool education.
At the Shoura Council on Sunday Al-Faiz said women teachers are more skilled in teaching small children than men. She allayed the fears of some men about the consequences of women teaching small boys, Al-Madinah daily reported on Monday.
Currently, 1,500 kindergartens are operating in the Kingdom.
The Ministry of Education recently allocated SR 170 million for the development of the preschool system across the country over the next five years.
In 2011 the Council of Ministers decided to implement an expansion plan for the sector and also support it as an independent stage in education.
In an earlier report, the Ministry of Education said it approved a kindergarten study program that aimed to develop children’s skills that are in tune with their immediate needs and environment. The ministry also issued permission to implement the Montessori system in private kindergartens. The ministry also introduced a total quality evaluation program for nursery schools, which evaluates the quality of buildings, study materials and the relation of the family with the nursery establishment.
The ministry allocates annually SR 2,000 to a class, in addition of SR 8 million for furnishing and educational materials and toys, suitable for children between 3 and 6 in nursery schools.
The ministry is preparing a national strategy for preschool education in collaboration with the King Abdullah Project for Educational Development. It aims to prepare a statistical database for preschool education. The ministry hopes to achieve a growth rate of 25 percent in the sector with the expansion of nursery schools to rural areas across the Kingdom.
As part of the king’s decree to provide 52,000 new job opportunities in the education sector in the 2012 budget, 7,000 jobs were created in kindergartens.