44% of families with children younger than 7 have no books

Over the past decade, preschoolers in Moldova have not benefited from new didactic materials, except the curriculum titled “Early Childcare and Child Development” that was distributed across the country, a study conducted by the UNESCO National Commission in Moldova shows. Against this background, the publishing of two textbooks for preschoolers this year, which will be distributed to all the 1300 kindergartens in the country, is regarded as a highly important event, especially because this is the first attempt of the Ministry of Education and Youth (MEY) to deliver such textbooks to teachers and eventually to parents. According to deputy minister Valentin Crudu, kindergartens have never been provided with textbooks, including in the Soviet period. That is why their need for didactic material is so acute. Starting 2006, Moldova benefits from a project funded by the World Bank and the Catalytic Trust Fund for providing kindergartens in Moldova with textbook, the deputy minister added. Discussions on this topic and other subjects regarding the management of didactic support for preschoolers are held as part of the subregional conference, taking place in Chisinau. The conference brings together specialists from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia. Latvia, Romania and Moldova, who are debating policies and relevant strategies in providing textbooks. The children born in 2007 will go to school in 2015, said Ray Virgilio Torres, UNICEF representative for Moldova. This is the generation that falls under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for which the Moldovan Government pledged that by 2015 all the children will enjoy a high quality primary education. A good start at an early sage of child development is an important step in reaching the MDGs in education, Torres said. A study by UNICEF revealed that the situation in what concerns textbooks in preschool educational establishments is much poorer in rural areas than in towns and cities in Moldova. In villages educators often use photocopied materials to teach the preschoolers, which considerably reduces their learning abilities. As reported by UNICEF earlier, 44 in 100 families with children younger than 7 do not have even a single book for children. In rural families this rate reaches 56 percent, compared to 30 in urban areas. For rich and poor families the indicators stand at 20 and 74 percent, respectively.