| Abstract [eng] |
During a period of rapid globalisation, education has an obligation to adapt to the -needs of society. Current Lithuanian education policy for pre-school children provides that each child must be granted access to public services, working or needy families must be provided with greater support and a wider range of educational programmes that meet the needs of parents and children have to be developed. Currently in Lithuania, pre-school and pre-primary education is not mandatory, but it is planned to make pre-primary education mandatory from 1 September, 2016. It has given rise to various discussions about equal opportunities for children who are learning in primary schools. This suggests that the environment in which a child grows up and learns before school is very important for further learning of the child. Regardless of whether the child attends an educational institution or is educated at home, it is necessary to prepare children for school by training their body, developing their language skills and images, so they would meet compulsory competencies established for pre-primary education. The thesis attempts to identify the impact of pre-school and pre-primary education on equal start opportunities, to highlight the urgency of the problem and to present the findings. The resulting data will highlight the importance of pre-school and pre-primary education for children and their preparation for primary education curriculum. The thesis raises the following objectives: to reveal the conditions for assuring equal start opportunities; To substantiate the methodology for assuring equal start opportunities; To determine the X, Y and Z expression of equal start opportunities in primary schools. The data has shown that children who did not attend pre-school institutions are less prepared for school, i.e. they have less well-developed skills that are needed in order to learn under the primary education curriculum. |
