No nursery ‘til school – the transition to primary school without institutional transition support due to the COVID-19 shutdown in Germany

Abstract

The early educational support of basic school skills during nursery can have a positive impact on a successful transition into primary school and future school success and achievement -especially for in this context low-performing children. Therefore, most German nurseries developed additional concepts to support the acquisition of basic school skills during the last year of nursery. However, due to the COVID-19 shutdown face-to-face support for pre-schoolers was closed down. This study attempts to examine how basic school skills with respect to language and mathematical skills of preschoolers developed during the COVID-19 nursery shutdown. 49 children were evaluated in a single-group pre-post test design using five subtests of the Intelligence and Development Scales 2 (IDS-2) before and after nurseries were shut down. Additionally, qualitative interviews were conducted at t 2 to provide further reliable and valuable information that goes beyond structured testing. Research showed significant decreases of language and mathematical skills. These findings support the conclusion that nursery shutdowns may have a negative impact on pre-schoolers' educational skills which help to make transitions easier. Concludingly, the study stresses the particular role of nurseries with regard to early childhood education and childhood development in order to support the transition to school.

Challenges Faced by Students with Special Needs in Primary Education during Online Teaching

“…However, students' feeling of fear was not strongly observed in this study. On the contrary, [19] found that kindergarten students with special needs view their school future with fear. This difference in the results may stem from the difference in the students' age and development or the difference in the teaching practices (e.g., play-based learning at kindergarten) and the additional difficulty of transition that pupils have to face from kindergarten to primary school.…”

Preschool teachers' perceptions of preschool education during Covid-19 in Greece: a diary-interview study

“…Furthermore, teachers worldwide faced difficulties in teaching topics that they considered to be important, and assisting students to gain the skills necessary for the transition to primary education. This issue has been reported in the contexts of Greece, Germany, Turkey, the US and the UK (Quenzer-Alfred et al, 2021;Yildirim, 2021;Gonzàlez et al, 2022;Apostolou, 2022;Wythe, 2022;Bakopoulou, 2022;Gelir, 2023). Finally, preschool teachers have internationally reported on their difficulties to replicate the aspects of traditional education such as inquiry-based teaching when teaching remotely (Timmons et al, 2021), which led them to have doubts on the effectiveness of remote teaching and learning for preschoolers (Atiles et al, 2021;Duran, 2021;Negrette et al, 2022).…”

Discrimination in Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesian Higher Education

“…(Abdullah, 2020). With a constant threat of infection (Pradana et al, 2020), human life has changed considerably in the social and educational sectors (Lee & Rose, 2021;Quenzer-Alfred et al, 2021).…”