Early and pre-school education reform planned
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Wednesday, January 6
Three Georgian Dream (GD) majority lawmakers have initiated a bill that envisages the regulation of early and pre-school education throughout the country.
The draft law offers amendments to the 15 existing laws to ensure quality in early and pre-school education, as well as updated inclusive programmes and the prevention of mental and physical abuse against minors.
The bill envisages a two-stage education system: early education and care for children up to 2 years and from 2 to 6 years. The bill also presents school-readiness program for all 5-year-old children.
According to the authors of the bill - Eka Beselia, Gedevan Popkhadze and Otar Chrdoleli - the draft has covered every detail of their proposal.
“The draft specifies how many children should be in groups in early educational institutions, how many teachers should look after them, what would be the roles of local and central governments, as well as various state bodies in this regard.
“The document regulates the following issues: creating classroom groups by age; the number of children per class (15-22 children); teachers’ and caregivers’ functional relations.
“The draft also suggests inclusive education for all minors, taking their mental, physical, racial, gender, religious, social, emotional linguistic and other backgrounds into account. The bill prohibits any type of physical or psychological violence against children. Anyone who harms minors will face legal consequences,” the authors defined.
The draft law also read that parents would be actively involved in the state educational chain, meaning that special councils will be formed at early and pre-school educational institutions consisting of 7 members; five of them would be parents.
Parliament will discuss the draft law at a spring session.
