Early Years in Borneo

Rachel Riggs from Imaginary Leaps in Preston, reports from her travels through the Sarawak region of Malaysian Borneo enroute to Perth, Western Australia. She will be keeping intouch with regular updates regarding early years arts activities and practice in Australia and the Pacific Asia areas.

During my brief stay in Kuching, I was lucky enough to come across Sarawak's Pre-school Education Convention with its theme this year of 'Generating Creative Minds'.

The first convention in 2006, was 'Learning the Fun Way' to enhance the knowledge of pre school teachers that learning should be fun and interactive so as to cultivate the love for learning later in life. Professional training sessions are held in areas such as reading for the very young and improving learning enviroments.Awards are given out to outstanding pre-schools that have shown innovation in their teaching.

The Sarawak Economic Development programme (SEDC) has a main priority for funding pre school education in the state, especially in rural rainforest areas. For over 20 years The Child and Family Development programme has provided affordable early years education to lower income group families.

With 58 schools in total, mainly in the rural areas of Sarawak, the government recognises the need for early training and the support of parents with high expectations for their childrens futures.

SeDidik's curriculum is based on the National Pre School Curriculum covering seven main areas – physical, cognitive and social-emotional development, language and communication, religious and moral, creativity and aesthetics as well as computer skills. They also learn English language as well as science and maths in English!

Datuk Talip Zulpilip- Chairman of SEDC states

'In essence, pre-chool education provides the foundation for formal education and so our expectations are that these children must learn the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic and possess the ability to think for themselves. Hence our teachers are constantly being upgraded from diploma to degree status, whilst our curriculum also undergoes constant upgrading as newer and better programmes are devised.'

Sounds very familiar.......

To see more of Boneo click here