At a briefing, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor Abakir Mamytov emphasized that in Kyrgyzstan, teachers had no experience working with six-year-old children, as until that moment they had only been trained by kindergarten educators. This created a gap when six-year-old children entered the first grade for the first time.
Bryzgalova also noted that in September, children came to schools unprepared for learning and lacking even basic social skills.
“This year, the Ministry of Education faced a situation where six-year-old children entered the first grade, many of whom did not have basic social skills. This turned out to be a serious challenge for them. Classes had 25 children, while in central urban schools, the number of students reached 50. Teachers needed to do a lot of work to help the children adapt to the school system. Some of them immediately moved to the second grade,” she reported.
According to her, parents did not provide teachers with information about their children's preparedness.
“Despite the Ministry of Education's calls to indicate the level of a child's preparedness, whether they had undergone preschool training in kindergartens or educational centers, many parents reacted with distrust. As a result, children who were not ready to study the programs designed for 12-year education entered the second grade. The programs for the first and second grades differ significantly from the previous ones. This became one of the difficulties faced by the teaching staff during the first quarter. Teachers had to rethink their approaches to teaching,” added Bryzgalova.
