Early childhood education in Mongolia needs to be improved

Oyundelger 2017-03-30 02:03

Society

A new World Bank report recommends that Mongolia expand access to preschool services in rural areas, prioritizing home-based early-childhood education for hard-to-reach populations.

Early childhood education in Mongolia needs to be improved. A new World Bank report recommends that Mongolia expand access to preschool services in rural areas, prioritizing home-based early-childhood education for hard-to-reach populations, such as nomadic herders. Mongolia has achieved tremendous gains in improving access to regular and alternative services for early childhood education, with the number of children enrolled more than doubling between 2005 and 2015. Despite this success, children from rural areas and those from poorer families have significantly lower access. The report shows that increasing family engagement with children through home activities, such as reading, singing and playing together, leads to significantly higher cognitive skills, underlining the potential for a home-based model to improve school readiness among the hard-to-reach populations. This approach proves far more effective in closing the school readiness gap than existing alternative education services, such as mobile ger-kindergartens for herders, because the short duration of the latter lowers the chances that enrolled children will catch up with peers in kindergarten. The report recommends targeted investments to improve kindergarten quality, such as through better financing and the provision of better learning materials and greater variety in classroom activities.