| Abstract [eng] |
Parent‘s Criteria and Possibilities to Choose Preschool Education Institutions in the City of Vilnius Relevance and the problem. The data of long-term researches of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that high-quality pre-school education has a positive influence on further children’s social and emotional development, especially for children who live at risk of social exclusion, also, it helps to reduce poverty, solves a lot of social issues, improves pupils’ achievements in school, has an impact on further learning and life i.e. it performs the function of exclusion prevention. The research object: to determine parents of Vilnius city choosing criteria and possibilities of pre-school educational establishments. The research tasks: 1. To determine parents’ self-determination reasons to sign up a child in pre-school. 2. To determine choosing criteria of pre-school accordingly to parents’ gender, education, social status, child’s gender, his/her age, family budget. 3. To estimate the real possibilities of pre-school choosing. 4. To estimate the concord between pre-school offering facilities and parents’ expectations. Survey methodology. The survey had been being carried out from March to April in 2015 in 12 nursery schools and pre-schools. 1089 respondents (parents of 2-7 years old children) have been participated in the research. The difference has been treated as insignificant, when p < 0,05. It has been applied the method of binary multiannual logistic regression in order to determine risk factors. The Results. The reasons why parents decide to sign up a child to a kindergarten: a possibility to communicate with same-age peers (77,5%), education of special capacities (in art, sport and etc.) (47,3%), parents‘ wish/necessity to keep their career/studies (45,4%), better conditions of child education (38,1 %) and a possibility to get a specialist‘s help (speech therapist, psychologist, and etc.) (32,9 %). The main criteria for choosing a kindergarten: geographically convenient location (67,0 %), positive previous experience, when older children attend a kindergarten (26%), high-quality teachers‘ qualification (17,2%), friends‘ recommendations (14,2%), the factors which have an influence on kindergartens choosing: parent age (it has an impact according to geographically convenient location, friends‘ recommendations, low taxes), parents’ education (choosing according to friends’ recommendations, geographically convenient location, qualified specialists), mother’s social status (according to advice of media), child’s gender (geographically convenient location, according to friends’ recommendations), child’s age (according to friends’ recommendation, low taxes), family budget (according to proper accommodation). 46,7 % of parents had an opportunity to choose a kindergarten, the remaining did not. 24,6% of respondents are not satisfied with the diversity of kindergartens. Conclusions. The factors, which mostly cause parents’ self-determination to sign up a child in a kindergarten, are better education conditions for children than it is in home, education of special capacities, possibility to communicate with same-age peers, a possibility for child to get a specialist’s help. Mostly parents choose pre-school educational establishment for these reasons: geographically convenient location of a kindergarten, well-known kindergarten, because older children attended it, teachers with high-quality qualification, friends’ recommendations. Mostly these factors have an influence on kindergarten choosing: age and education of parents, mother’s social status, child’s gender and age, and family budget. It is a limited possibility to choose a kindergarten in Lithuania. |
