Day Care assistants set to provide better educational activities |28 December 2011

This appeal was made by the director for early childhood Shirley Choppy recently during a ceremony to present certificate of attendance to a group of day care assistants. The ceremony was held at the department of education headquarters in the presence of principal secretary Merida Delcy and other ministry officials.

Organised by the early childhood section within the education department, a total of 24 assistants received their certificates after completing the basic upgrading course in 2010 and 2011.

According to Mrs Choppy, the education department is always committed to providing quality early childhood education, by providing continuous training programmes and professional development initiatives to child care and assistants.

She emphasised the importance of the new ECCE framework launched by Vice-President Danny Faure recently, where all stakeholders – in government and non-government organisations – have to work together to ensure that each child deserves the right and a winning start in life.

The aim of the training course was to enhance the assistants’ knowledge, skills and abilities so as to better plan and deliver quality educational services to the young children.

Among the topics covered were planning of educational activities, formulation of objectives, language and numeracy activities, storytelling, pre-reading and pre-writing, gross and fine motor skills. The importance of play to boost children’s learning as well as strategies to improve day care services was also addressed.

During the ceremony, two assistants showcased what they have learnt in the training through a video presentation. There were also a variety of poems, songs and dance by children from three day care centres.

Mrs Choppy called on the day care centre assistants to implement what they have learnt and make a difference in the lives of our young children.

She also called on all day care operators to encourage and support their assistants to retain their staff and further improve service delivery.