I never went to a preschool. In fact, in the 1940’s in England, where I was born, it was the beginning of the end of World War II and rationing was the order of the day, there were no preschools. They were unheard of.

Now it is the norm.

Here in Cayman there are many preschools to choose from and in a report just released, thanks to a CNS FOI request, we learn there is a large disparity regarding quality and “only half of the country’s preschools making the grade. According to the progress reports, problems range from environmental dangers at the facilities to poor learning and nurturing, where in some cases staff are not even speaking with the kids in their care.”

The Cayman Islands Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) have said from an initial baseline review in 2013 there are some centres that “provide the very best in quality learning experiences” whilst “roughly half of the centres have aspects where improvements are needed or where there are significant weaknesses.”

Mary Rodrigues, the Education Ministry’s Chief Officer, said, “Standards require strategies to help centres achieve the kind of results our children deserve.”

Guidelines and other information can be accessed on the Ministry of Education’s website www.education.gov.ky by following the “Education” link, and on to the “Early Childhood” page.

You can also go to the CNS website and download the guidelines and reports at: http://www.caymannewsservice.com/local-news/2014/06/19/pre-school-centres-pressed-improve

However, I posed the question at the top of my Editorial, “Good preschools, bad preschools. Does it matter?”

I am sure your immediate response is, of course it does.

Actually, research has shown, “preschool only benefits children from these disadvantaged families (in particular, families that are below the poverty line, whose mothers are uneducated, or who are racial minorities). This could be because preschool acts as a kind of “equalizer,” ensuring that for at least a few hours a day, these kids get the same high-quality interaction with adults as more advantaged children do, which helps to even the developmental playing field.”

The above quotes has been taken from an article on the slate.com website by Melinda Wenner Moyer titled “The Early Education Racket: If you are reading this article, your kid probably doesn’t need preschool”.

Wenner Moyer claims “research suggests that parents who are financially comfortable tend to devote more resources and time to their kids, in part because they can.”

In a study published last year, University of Texas psychologist Elliot Tucker-Drob reported “that the home environments of children who do not attend preschool have a much larger influence on kindergarten academic ability than do the home environments of preschoolers. In other words, a bad home situation becomes a much smaller problem when your kid goes to preschool; when you have a good home environment, preschool doesn’t really matter. (Granted, children from poor families tend to go to lower quality preschools than wealthy kids do, but for them, a bad preschool is usually better than nothing.)

“This is not to say that parents who have money can do anything they want and their kids will be fine. We all know plenty of horrible adults who were once rich kids. But as Tucker-Drob puts it, upper-middle-class parents do ‘tend to be choosing between all very good options.’”

The article also takes a look at Montessori preschools and we have one here in Cayman:

“Some new research does suggest that certain Montessori schools could provide an academic edge over conventional preschools, even among advantaged children. Research on Montessori is overall a mixed bag—some research suggests kids do better in them, while other research suggests the opposite. So last year, Angeline Lillard, a developmental psychologist at the University of Virginia, conducted a study to try to tease out the truth. Montessori schools can be parsed into two types: classical Montessori and what Lillard calls “supplemented” Montessori. The classical approach strictly abides by the founder’s rules, only allowing certain types of materials in the classroom and grouping kids of different ages together. Supplemented Montessori, which is far more common in the United States, typically separates children according to age and augments traditional tool-based Montessori learning with activities like pretend play and direct instruction.

“When Lillard compared the test scores of children from advantaged families who spent a school year in conventional preschools with those who spent a year in the two types of Montessori schools, she found that children in the classical Montessori programs fared much better than both the other groups. At the end of the school year, they exhibited better working memory, planning, reading, and vocabulary skills, and they displayed a better understanding of fairness and willingness to share. Past studies of Montessori programmes have not distinguished between classical and supplemented approaches, which could explain why results from them have been so mixed. But no one yet knows whether these advantages last, and indeed, some research suggests that the academic “edge” some kids get from preschool fades over time. (There are similar arguments over the lasting effects of Head Start; programs across the country differ drastically, so it’s hard to tell why some seem to help and some don’t.)”

The conclusion of the article says, “When I asked [social psychologist Richard Nisbett, co-director of the Culture and Cognition programme at the University of Michigan] how important it is to send your child to the best preschool, he told me that as far as he knows (and he seems to know a lot), ‘It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.’”

I know I am going to get a backlash on this one. I am of the opinion that the main reason families send their children to preschools is they work during the day and therefore don’t have the time to give them the proper home environment the child deserves. They probably don’t mind one bit whether it is a good preschool or a bad preschool. As long as they are comfortable in the knowledge the child is safe and being looked after any learning skills are just a bonus.

You can download the whole Melinda Wenner Moyer article at: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/the_kids/2013/01/how_important_is_preschool_if_you_are_researching_early_education_philosophies.html