Pre-Primary and Early Education

Shinami Ito, Kyra Adsetts Stevens, Khushi Khare

We are students from Universities in Japan, and the Bader International Study Centre (Queen's University), hoping to create awareness towards the effects and situations of education in England, Japan, and Canada. This page highlights our research through surveys and interviews collected in hopes of helping others understand issues in Pre-primary education.

Our Research

Many do not realize how little they know about the education system and some of the events happening outside of their own country. Our surveys were conducted, one in England and Canada, and one in Japan. These surveys were to help us understand how many on average know of, or do not know, how the early and pre-primary education systems work in other countries.

Interview With Liz Hubbell and Barbara Gill

Text Transcript

Click the "Text Transcript" button for a written version of this interview

In this interview, we are speaking to Liz Hubbell, the Concurrent Education Professor at the Bader International Study Centre, and teacher at an English primary school, as well as Barbara Gill, a retired teacher of an English primary school. They discuss the issues of education in both Japan, England, and Canada.

Interview With Professor Kentaro Okada

Text Transcript

Click the "Text Transcript" button for a written version of this interview

This interview was with one of the professors from Aichi University (Japan), Professor Kentaro Okada. He specializes in Japanese politics and has worked in both Canada and Japan. He has a family and has knowledge of both education systems in both countries. He attended Japanese kindergarten and a year of Canadian courses in university where he studied politics.

Over the past two semesters, our group members from both Japanese and Canadian/British universities have been collecting survey responses. Both countries were given the same questions to answer, and both sets of responses are available to show.

Japanese Survey Responses

就学前教育自体を詳しく存じておりませんが、やらないよりかは良さそうなイメージがあります。
I don't know much about preschool education itself, but I have an image that seems better than not doing it.

幼少であればあるほど知識がよく身につくから.
The younger you are, the better you will acquire knowledge.

幼少期の学習が、子供のその後の学習にあらゆる好影響を与えるから。

Early childhood learning has all the positive effects on a child's subsequent learning.

Canadian/English Survey Responses

Many countries don’t have enough money to reliably fund an education system, or don’t have enough teachers to teach,

Academic exposure through experts at very early age is a bliss and ensures concrete base.

Being the eldest in the family, I was sent to school at an early age. I was a quick learner so I built-up self confidence and was well versed with all the nursery rhymes etc.at a very early age as compared to my siblings because they were not sent to school as early as I did.

We observed that many people believe that pre-primary education is important. However, there are not adequate government facilities to provide early education. Some say that it helps aid kids to develop basic skills to provide a foundation for higher education and inculcate skills for social interactions which will help them to survive in this society. Most people lack awareness about the current policies for pre-primary education but are keen to know more about them. On the other hand, a few people believe that pre-primary is not important as they turned out fine without it.