Kindergarten reform to avoid stress on children

The Education and Youth Affairs Bureau (DSEJ) intends to launch a reform of the pre-primary curriculum in order to avoid introducing “too much academic content” too early. The new pedagogical strategy gives priority to the development of children instead.
DSEJ director Leong Lai explained that the new reform proposes to include five learning areas which will all focus on basic life learning and early childhood development.
“We don’t want the children to learn any unnecessary academic content that would make the children suffer from stress. For example, in the first year of kindergarten students should not be required to learn how to write; they can only learn how to write in their second year of kindergarten,” he explained.
Liu Nai-Hua, assistant professor at the University of Macau’s Faculty of Education, told TDM that some kindergartens impose an unreasonable amount of work on infants. She said that written examinations should only be introduced at a later scholarly level.