A Development Study Of Pre-Primary Education In SUB-Saharan Africa

After entering the21st century, knowledge economy makes competition across nations shift from comprehensive national strength competition to the competition of science and technology, and then caused competition of talents and education. With the progress in brain research, pre-primary education has attracted extensive attention of the international community. Developed countries attache great importance to pre-primary education, and consider it as the most important factor when refer to national sustainable development and human resource development. In the developing countries, when people fight for children’s rights to live, they also pay attention to children’s intelligence and social development. Especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, countries gradually realize the importance of preschool education. To improve the current status and pre-primary education, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa made a lot of efforts.When compared to international level, pre-primary education in the developing countries is relatively backward. However, it is a serious problem to improve pre-primary education in developing countries. At present, developed countries and regions are mainly taken as the research objectives on the study of early childhood rare and education, while developing countries and regions, especially African countries, are abandoned into the dark side of this study field. This thesis is a development study on pre-primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. It states its current development, characteristics and developing issues, aiming to make more people gain knowledge of pre-primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, through comparing with the pre-primary education in our country, the thesis comes up with several rewarding advices.This thesis consists of six parts. The exordium elaborates the study background, purposes, contents, methods, significances and the overview of relevant research at home and abroad.The first part depicts the development history of preschool education in Sub-Saharan Africa, respectively introduces the characteristics of pre-primary education before and after independence. Before independence, early childhood development is divided into three main patterns, African pattern, Islamic school, colonial model of pre-school education. After independence, countries faced new challenges under the new situation. They continuously explored and developed pre-school education while absorb the successful experience.The second part summarizes the current situation of the development of pre-primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Introduction includes pre-school education institutions, teachers, objectives, ways and GER. Currently, there is varying types of institutions of early childhood education for children of all ages. Pre-school teachers are badly qualified, and most of them are untrained. Most countries come to recognize the importance of pre-primary education for children’s development, and they attach great importance to the integrated development of children. Pre-school education courses differ from "school readiness" curriculum mode to social pedagogy mode. However, at present, gross enrollment ratio of pre-school education in SSA is still low.The third part is the introduction of early childhood education policy and measures in SSA. Generally, there is no educational policy framework exists to provide financial support, coordination and supervision. Many countries carried out a series of pre-primary education plan. But due to the lack of experience and resource channel, they need external assistance such as capital and technical support.The fourth part analyses the achievements and limitations during the development in SSA. They have made a lot of progresses in ECD. The progresses are reflected in the following aspects, the government increased policy support and spending, the quality of teachers improves by teacher training and the teacher-pupil ratio is getting better, the government works together with stakeholders to promote the development of preschool education, gross enrollment ratio of pre-primary is increasing. However, when compared to other developing countries and the world average, early childhood development in SSA is still lag behind. The shortcomings are reflected in the following aspects:low gross enrollment ratio of pre-primary, shortage of early childhood teachers, blankness of pre-primary education policy and shortage of funds, which greatly hindered the overall development of the education in this region. The education right of children to go to pre-school is not guaranteed.The fifth part explores the challenges of pre-primary education in SSA. The challenges are policy framework planning, financial support, teachers’ professional quality improvement and promotion of fair, etc.The sixth part contents two parts. The first part is the comparison of similarities and differences between SSA and China. Then, the thesis comes up with several strategies with China’s perspective. Countries in SSA and China are all developing countries, but China started pre-primary education earlier and better. Through learning from experiences abroad and basing on local cultural, countries should promote the sustainable development of pre-primary education in SSA.