Chennai: A day after Tamil Nadu State Council for Educational Research (TNSCERT) released the draft syllabus for pre-KG, LKG and UKG classes, educationists in the state have demanded that the minimum infrastructure facilities to be put in place to conduct KG classes be defined.
To make the pre-school experience a joyful one, the first-ever kindergarten (KG) syllabus released on Thursday has restricted the pre-school learning only to the introduction to numbers and letters.
While doing away the written exercises, it has suggested various activities including colouring, clay modelling, spray painting, maze, sand filling, joining dots, circling, matching and tracing.
Senior educationist S.S. Rajagopal said, “In nursery education, support systems are more important than the curriculum. The government should prescribe minimum support systems that are required to run the nursery schools like the number of caregivers, mats and the steps to ensure hygiene.”
He further drew attention on lack of nursery training to teachers. “There is no nursery training at present in Tamil Nadu and only 5% of teachers have trained in nursery teaching. Without the nursery training, we cannot improve the quality of nursery schools,” he argued.
Educationist Prince Gajendrababu also said the government should come out with the minimum required infrastructure facilities like teachers and helpers in the nursery school. “The school timing for pre-KG, LKG and UKG classes are long and kids aged between 2 to 5 cannot be kept in the schools from 9.30 am to 4 pm,” he urged.
