Can Preschools Help Kids Build Essential Skills for Employment?
Connecting essential employment skills with early education may seem a little far-stretched. However, new research in the UK highlights the need to prioritise the social and emotional development among pre-school children as key for their future employment opportunities.
The Skills That Matter Most
What Are Essential Employment Skills?
The research highlights a set of six skills identified in The Skills Imperative 2035 report as especially vital to the future workforce.
Two Key Categories
Social-Emotional Learning
Approaches to Learning
Six Critical Skills for the Future Workforce
Cognitive Skills
Problem Solving & Decision Making
Information Literacy
Creative Thinking
Social Skills
Collaboration
Communication
Self-Management Skills
Organising, Planning & Prioritising
Importance of High-Quality Early Education
Role of Kindergarten Teachers in Social-Emotional Development
The report concludes that high-quality early education with a focus on social-emotional skills is essential for children’s development. Kindergarten teachers should be highly trained to model and teach these skills.
How Schools Fail to Develop Employment-Ready Skills
Exam-Factory Culture
The exam-factory culture in schools is blamed for students lagging behind in socio-emotional skills.
Obsession with Memorisation
An over-emphasis on rote learning leaves little room for developing critical skills.
Rigid, Overloaded Curricula
Strict, content-heavy syllabi can alienate young learners and stifle creativity.
Impact on Arts and Wellbeing
Exams often force the arts out of the curriculum and drive a toxic league-table culture.
Further Reading
Read more in this article [here].
Snezhana Daneva is a Director at ICCC since September 2010. She gained experience in teaching, marketing and client relations, as well as cultural diplomacy and regional project management after a diverse career at the British Council in Bulgaria and in the UK. She worked as a volunteer in not-for-profit organizations related to child birth and child care.
Snezhana has MA in Education Management and MA in English and American Studies from Sofia University, and Management Certificate and Diploma from Open University, UK. Her recent Education Management degree thesis focused on children’s social-emotional development in the early years, comparing government standards and practice in Bulgaria and in the United Kingdom.