From early childhood education children transition to The primary school education. This transition is managed by parents and guardians who are not always fully equipped with knowledge in human development concepts. For some, it is sufficient to find a primary school. There is no attempt to link the early childhood center education with the new school. As a result there is no seamless continuation in the education of the child. This is destabilizing the education of the child. A specialist mentor is required for this transition.
Children transition to different kind of primary schools, namely residential schools where they live at the school residences and only see their parents during school holidays, day schools where they go and come back home every day, combination schools where the children leave for school on Monday and come back home on Friday, and during the week they live at the school residences. There are those who may be registered with home based primary education. The parents educate their children themselves or hire a private tutor and educationist. Those parents whose careers involve extensive travel from country to country, like diplomats or sportsmen, they may enroll their children for mobile schools wherein the children are taught on the go. All these different type of schools have different demands on the children and require different approaches in supporting the children. All of them will benefit from a specialist Primary School Education Mentor.
At the primary education level children must enjoy their education, irrespective of the type of the school they are attending. That is, having fun at learning is key determinant of their success. Parents and mentors must go all out in ensuring that the children experience fun. One sure source of fun is being introduced to other children that they learn together with. At the same time the teachers, mentors and parents must guard against bullying by other children. Bullying takes away fun from the children and must be rooted out as soon as it is identified. The difficulty is that children are often not able or confident to report it. It often take long before it is picked up. Often when it is picked up, the child would have already suffered emotional hurt. This is where a primary school education mentor is valuable. Mentors purposefully look for symptoms of any interference in the education of the children.
The primary education stage of the children is the most sensitive stage. It requires purposeful partnership of many stakeholders of the child, especially the partnership between the teachers and parents (guardians). What happens at school must be shared and made known to the parents in the most factual (and reliable) manner. The same with what happens at home, the teachers at school must be made aware of, without sharing the confidential family matters. But those developments that impact directly on the education of the child must be communicated to the school. A mentor would play valuable role here as he/she will package the information professionally and protect the integrity of all involved. The interest is always that of the child.
We should not forget to integrate the child’s community activities into his/her education programme. Children do not know which community activities they would like to participate in. They often have multiple interests. They should be given the opportunity to explore as many as possible but be assisted in achieving a balance. Such activities could include sport, music, art, dance, etc. They are often dictated to by what is available in their neighborhood. However, the mentor and parents must source centers that offer what the child love doing. There is a potential conflict between extramural activities at school and in the community. This could be confusing to the child. The mentor and parents must strive to close such a gap as it could bring disturbance in the education and development of the child.
The school subjects that are offered must be well researched and interrogated in the interest of the child. Alignment and continuation of what the child learned at the early childhood center must be use as a guideline. In principle must build on what he/she has been exposed to. At the primary education level the child must be exposed to as more diverse subjects as possible. Over time the mentor, teachers and parents will find out the talents of the child and guide their education into high school accordingly.
The private schools tend to offer bigger diversity of subjects and activities for the children than public schools. However, private schools are more expensive than public schools. The advice for parents is that a balance between cost and interests of the child as determining factors must be achieved. The education of the child, especially at the primary level cannot be compromised as the future implications could be dire.
Identification and observing the children’s talents and interests at this stage of their education is a special project on its own. The primary education mentors are qualified to assist the parents and teachers. A talent missed at this stage may be lost forever. This is one of the main reasons why mentors are required. They provide mentorship to both parents and teachers. Of the school does not mentors available for the parents, they must engage independent mentors specifically for this purpose. They can book once off session or short-, medium-, to long-term mentorship programme. Children whose parents have mentors specially for their primary education stage do very well, even in the future levels of their education and holistic development.
Sometimes the parents’ own careers interfere with their children’s education. At this level it is not recommended that the children change their schools too often. If there are no options but to keep on changing schools, either home or mobile kind of school should be considered. However, the downsides that collective learning and development benefits are forfeited. You can be guaranteed that the effects of such situations of constantly moving parents will show later in the children’s education. Whether they will be positive or negative, it depends on what the children later become. The save bet is to be as consistent and stable as possible during the primary school education level.
We are a specialist coaching, mentorship, human capital development, management and leadership consulting organization. Should you be in need of our primary education mentorship service contact us. We will gladly match you with our mentors in a once off, six months, or twelve months mentorship programme.