Creating the Guidelines for Grade Zero pre-primary education in Swaziland
An enormous amount of time and work has been devoted to the creation of the service for children aged 5 to 6, that should offer the children of Swaziland (now eSwatini) tha opportunity of one year of pre-primary education, mandatory and free of charge. The work have been tutored by IBE-UNESCO.
The main lines of the syllabus are based on the national curriculum framework and are planned to guide the teachers in their future work with children.
An attentive work has been done in order to outline all the components of the early education service.
Guideliens are provided to the learning environment, and a very focused work has been done on the teaching-learning approach which is expected to be child-centered, starting by the ideas and curiosities of children instead of having a pre-defined program, following the most updated researches in the field of neuocognition, and based on the most advanced pedagogical experiecnes in the world, like the Reggio Emilia Approach.
Attention has been payed also to parents. Parents are the most important people in children’s early life. Cooperation between parents and the preschool staff paves the way to the educational process that will foster the children’s development and help crystallize their potential. Therefore, the Guidelines are defining all the possibilities to participation of parents to the early development of children.
This is a very important step in Swazi education system, and will be followed by further development, in line with the UNESCO Moscow Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education.
