Pre-Primary: Workshop stresses better teaching

LAHORE: The government should give pre-primary education greater importance, said Atif Imran, speaking at a training workshop for pre-primary school teachers in Lahore on Saturday.

Drawing attention to what he considers a major flaw in the education system, Imran said that “so far only private institutes have been struggling with the idea of pre-primary education and they charge a lot. The government has done very little. The government says that 1 per cent of pre-primary schools are operated by the government sector but we have yet to come across a government owned pre-school.”

The workshop, organised by New Century Education (NCE), talked about the problems that pre-primary education in Pakistan faced and briefed the participants on the latest educational techniques.

Imran emphasised the importance of adopting creative learning techniques in pre-primary education.

He said that rote learning could hamper the cognitive development of children and should be discouraged in pre-schools. Maqsood Ali, another teacher trainer, said activity based learning was the best way of teaching pre-primary children.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2011.