BARRIERS TO EDUCATION

Remember the scene? It is a hot, summer's day and outside the large municipal school or higher education establishment everyone is waiting for their offspring to come out from their entrance examinations, the parents sometimes more worried than the students themselves, because any examination is not just the result of days of hard work, but also real stress both for the children and their families and friends.

But now let's change the picture a bit and imagine that after a while (or to be precise, an hour and a half) it is not just excited youngsters of 16 and 17 years of age who are coming out of the school, but apprehensive and nervous 5-6 year old kiddies. And what's more, unlike the "adult" entrance exams, the "children's" are in two stages: written and oral.

A little legislation

Of course, it cannot be denied that the quicker pace of life, the increase in the amount of information, the change in the demands on education and time itself set their own standards. But the drive towards "Europeanization" and international standards frequently leads to ugly deformations in our education system. Our magazine has already written a number of times about the problems of education and the complaints of parents. In their pursuit of high-quality education parents are forced to look around on the "school market" for those that can provide a more or less decent standard of knowledge. Their interest here is focussed mainly on well-known schools in the city centre, vocational schools and secondary schools. Naturally, these, as in any market, have their own laws. Many examination barriers are being put up in the path of education-hungry children. That said, the height of these "barriers" differs from school to school. Before the start of the entrance exam season - enrolment in the primary class - which this year took place in April, the deputy education minister, the acting head of the education directorate for the city of Baku, Ceyhun Bayramov, sent the relevant instructions to the directors of schools and general educational institutions about setting up a working group for the enrolment of children. This group, as well as the director, includes principals of education, a psychologist, a doctor and representatives of the parents' council. The main thrust, as recommended by the ministry's spokesman, is on assessing physical and mental development, as well as knowledge levels.

Pre-school experience

So, the little fellow, just preparing to embark on the path of education, is met by a whole body of people in the shape of serious adults. We should also add that parents are frequently not allowed in to the examinations, so you can imagine what a trial this must be for the child, whichever way you look at it. As far as the examinations themselves are concerned, our respondents - the parents of future first-grade pupils - tell us that the questions and tasks in them vary from school to school (which once again proves they are unauthorized).  In some schools, for example, the approach is more or less reasonable - here they confine themselves to determining a child's overall development: his ability to give his own first name, surname and age, define colours, shapes, name the days of the week, list the names of domestic animals, and so on. Others lay emphasis on a patriotic upbringing: in which country a child lives, what its capital city is called, what the country's borders are, and so on.

Here, the psychologist Medina Sabitova points out that patriotism develops much later in children and they can absorb information by repetitive learning which, of course, will not in any way affect the level of their development. "Logical" tasks, to which the average child may respond with difficulty if at all, have become the norm. Incidentally, many educational centres that offer pre-school education also include exercises in logic. But developing creative and logical thinking among children is a lengthy, complex and diverse process, and examination questions, one finds, are taken from one and the same source - a book, for some strange reason entitled "Textbook of Mathematics", published by Eksmo in 2002. The saddest thing is that incorrect answers can be a reason a child is refused entry to a school.

Preventing a child from clamming up

The psychologist Humay Axundzada, who has worked in schools for many years, explains how their tests were carried out: "We tested the children on arrival, but this was done sparingly, cheerfully, in the nature of a game. Otherwise, there was no point to it. A child will clam up and it will all come to nothing. The tone in which the testing is carried out is very important - one adult to one child, or several children and one examiner, so that a child is not dominated by several adults. There should not be any prejudgment or, on the other hand, indifference. Both of these can traumatize a child. There do not have to be rigid frameworks to the test. One should speak quietly to the child on various subjects and try to encourage him. As far as pre-school children are concerned, they should be playing a lot of the time and learning during the playing process. Both physically and mentally, they are not ready to sit at a desk for a long period of time. Besides, psychologists are completely against parents trying to send their child to school too early. Even if a child's intellectual development exceeds his age, within a year or two he will be physically exhausted. So one should not be too hasty, either."

On the subject of logical tests, the psychologist adds: "You should start with a child from the time he is born, and at first do this in a simple way, because by nature he is curious. Adults simply have to find time for their child. The question of play schools also arises. Because educating a child does not mean sitting behind a desk! The main form of a child's activity is play. There should be a well-planned programme at these play schools - development games."

Filtration in favour of prestige

An expert of the Ministry of Education, who preferred to remain anonymous, said in an interview for R+ that, unfortunately, however optimistic one might be and given the best conditions, some children will be left out in the cold when they enter an establishment of education: "Take the entrance examinations to a music school or an arts university as an example - however gifted all these children may be, there is this concept of competition; in other words, the number of places is limited." As far as higher, specialized and secondary specialized educational establishments are concerned, it is difficult to deny the reasoning behind this argument. However, given the restricted access to a higher educational establishment, nevertheless an alternative should be created in the form of a specialized and vocational-technical education.

Why has such a situation come about in the sphere of compulsory primary education? After all, according to the law, examinations are not a necessary condition for admission and a child should not be refused admission to a school if it is in his residential area. The problem is that peripheral and conventional district schools are not coping with their educative and character-building functions. That is why the increasingly popular vocational schools, upper secondary schools and a number of central municipal schools are becoming more viable. In order to provide their children with an acceptable level of education, parents are filtering off educational establishments for their "prestige" and the good teachers there. For their part, the schools and vocational establishments, in order to protect themselves from a too abundant flow of pupils, are establishing fairly rigid (and one must admit arbitrary) standards and examinations for admission.

Incidentally, verifiable figures show that all these strict standards do not necessarily guarantee a high-quality education. The results of entrance examinations, which are deteriorating from year to year, bear this out. As the "Abiturient" magazine points out, according to the results of entrance examinations for the 2011-2012 academic year, the number of prospective students who achieved minimum points (0-100) was 38.66 per cent. In recent years, there has been a steady rise in this figure: 41.70 per cent in 2012-2013; 42.98 per cent in 2013-2014 and 43.89 per cent in the 2014-2015 academic year. Thus, strict entrance examinations are just one of the stages in the school services market.

But the main problem is that each child needs an individual approach. Ideally, there are three parameters for testing if a child is ready for systematic teaching in school.

A child is ready if…

The first parameter is his emotional and psychological state, i.e. his readiness to go to school. Psychologists have precise mechanisms and indicators of this condition. Incidentally, one of the obvious tests of this type is to ask a child to draw a person and his family. How a child depicts a person is linked with how he regards himself and the world around him and it shows the expert how a child is thinking. A drawing of a family shows a child's standing in his own family (a child cuddling up to his mother, but his father is at a distance or a child is small, but his parents are excessively big are clear indicators of a child's standing in a family). If the drawing is in proportion, then the child will learn normally (and artistic capabilities have nothing to do with it).

The second parameter is assessing the physical condition of the future child. By the age of six he should already be showing a certain level of physical development, be able to sit up without difficulty and turn to the right and left, and so on.

The third one is assessing his intellectual development: a child's speech, his ability to differentiate colours and forms and be able to count. The best test here is to show him a busy picture. This will help to assess a child's capabilities of speech (how "smoothly" he is able to explain the content of the picture), and his intellect.

Don't exclude, but admit

Such a level of testing is acceptable in any school, and its purpose is not to "weed out" undesirable pupils, but merely to ensure a correct approach to each one, regardless of the level of his development and aptitude. The exceptions are the specialized schools: music and arts schools, in which certain capabilities are really a requirement, and also the Baku European School for Gifted Children, which has a specially developed certified programme of education. Bearing in mind the special features of teaching, in order to be admitted to this school thorough testing must be carried out to determine a child's special abilities. But at the same time, many parents, out of natural vanity, try to send their child to such schools, labelling them as "gifted", without realizing that talent is not something that comes easily, but is a heavy responsibility which is not always within the reach of a child of fairly average ability. Besides, there is something that doesn't occur to most mums and dads: the educational plans drawn up by the ministry are the same for all schools. A priori, the programme is the same for all little children going to school. Furthermore, that moment when entrance examinations/tests for children are held has been given little consideration. For a child of six several months are very important for his development and can have a strong impact on his examination results, so the best time to hold them is not in May, but in August or September.

That said, the main advice to parents is to avoid being subjective and forget about sending your child to school before the age of six.  Generally speaking, schools should abolish the admission of children at the age of six. The best age for a child, for the potential of his organism and ability to master systematic knowledge is seven.

No child should be without education. This natural humanistic principle must be at the basis of the whole pre-school education system. But at the same time, it is vital that we have qualified, professional staff, qualified psychologists and that we operate to a system.