Regarding the Problem of 5 Year-Old Children

1. Regarding the Problem of 5 Year-Old Children Nino Labartkava Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University

2. The problem • There are no preschool classes at the base of Georgian schools and kindergartens; • According to amended Georgian Law on General Education in 2010, the primary school starting age was announced to be 5 year; • Because of it many 5 year-old children became the first graders.

3. „The Institute of Social Studies and Analysis" performed a qualitative survey about the problems regarding 5 year-old children upon the support of the National Center for Teacher Professional Development which revealed the following problems: • 5 agers are easily getting tired during the lessons, begin to play or fall asleep • Compared to 6 agers, they are characterized by mirror effect, are hard at spelling and reading skills, working with pen and writing the letters properly; • The motivation of the parents about taking their 5 year-old children to school is various. There is an expressed normative opinion that a child is intellectually ready for school when knowing rhymes, letters, numbers. • Thus, there are the other social factors as well: disarranged system of kindergartens, desirable pedagogue, busy schedule of parents, imitation to the other peers behavior, influence of law.

4. School Readiness Research • “School readiness research“ revealed the immatureness of the children, developing the improving methods based on them; • Relying on the school readiness thoeries, we applied the test as a method of the intellectual readiness by German phsychologist G. Vitslak, identifying 5,5 and 7 year-old children’s school readiness and intellectual skills; • The program by N. Gutskin ”Phsycological readiness of 6-7 year-old children” was applied for studying the social-personal readiness issues.

5. Current Results

6. Current results • The experiment showed that 5 agers of the experimental groups managed to improve their intellectual and social-personal skills; • Nevertheless, the reliable difference happened to be disclosed between 5 and 6-7 year-old children; • Thus, it was presumeable that 5 agers would be hard at coping with the school burden.

7. Recommendations • The following recommendations were made in connection with the two studies: it is essential to determine the school starting age or arrange the system of school readiness. • According to the other countries’ experience, the school readiness is observed in preschool educational institutions 3 times in a year, upon the thorough supervision of a caregiver and a psychologist. Preschool teacher observes the weaknesses of per child in the kindergarten, working for the remediation of the weaknesses during the following months and at the end of the academic year the decision is made whether a child is mature for schooling or not. The profile of every child is transferred to the school teacher in advance; therefore, a primary school teacher owes the full information about a child’s school readiness which helps to interact with the children in accordance with their peculiarities. • if 5 year-old children will be allowed to the preschool educational centers, then the staff of the preschool educational centers should be trained as well who will secure the readiness of children for schooling on the base of using the existed methodological resources (caring for the improvement of the three scopes); • if 5 year-old children continue to study at schools, then the classrooms infrastructure should be adapted in accordance with their peculiarities, separating 5 and 6 year-old children groups from one another during the lessons, setting up the preparatory classes at schools, informing the parents about the peculiarities of the school readiness of 5 year-old children.

8. Theses • Is it essential to set up the preschool classes of 5 agers ? • Should they be compulsory? • Will the minimal school starting age be revised?

9. Thank you for your attention!