Enhancing preschool educationin Hong Kong

Abstract

Although Hong Kong has over 1100 kindergartens and child care centres, and over 95% of its preschool-aged population attend preschools, education for these young children has received comparatively lower priority than primary, secondary or tertiary education. Over the past few decades, however, the Hong Kong Government has taken many positive steps to ensure that early childhood programmes provide a minimum acceptable quality of care and education. This paper presents an overview of preschool education in Hong Kong. It considers the history of preschool education, early childhood curriculum, training of early childhood professionals and ways in which standards of services are monitored Trends in preschool education are articulated and current problems in Early Childhood Education are discussed These include the exclusion from the main education system, inadequate subsidies to preschools, slow progress in teacher training, high adult-child ratios, the lack of attention to the transition from preschool to primary school, and the lack of policy-relevant empirical research. It is clear that the time has now come to move beyond ensuring minimum quality and directing resources towards high quality programmes of early childhood education and care.