KUCHING: Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah hopes participants can exchange ideas and learn from each other the best practices in facing new challenges in early childhood care and education (ECCE) from the three-day Sarawak Preschool International Convention 2021 which ends today.
“As Covid-19 evolves from pandemic to endemic, we need to adapt ourselves to the new norm in our teaching and learning process,” the Minister of Welfare, Community Wellbeing, Women, Family and Childhood Development said in her speech at the virtual launching ceremony of the convention yesterday (Oct 2).
Fatimah also urged ECCE teachers to prepare for the recovery of lost time and operating under the new norm in order to make up for slipped courses such as the valuable face-to-face, nurturing, teaching, and learning.
“Since our young children have undergone interrupted education, conventions like these will help educate them (ECCE teachers) with the necessary approach, techniques, skills.”
ECCE teachers, the minister added, played a pivotal role in ensuring the young children could catch up on their learning development so that they were better prepared to enter formal schooling in the future.
Fatimah added that her ministry aimed to have competent, educated, skilled teachers and caregivers with the right attitude and aptitude to provide high-quality ECCE for children in Sarawak.
Character building was the foundation for personal growth and ECCE teachers should impart the right moral and religious values in young children to give them a head start in life, she said.
“Teaching our children time-honoured religious and moral principles like honesty, respect, resilience, hard work, law-abiding, patriotism, and many others can help them stay strong, stand tall and firm, live with integrity and be able to weather winds of challenge.
“The character of our children affects every aspect of their current and future lives. Thus, it is crucial for ECCE teachers to instil religious and moral values among the young children in their care during their early formative years,” she stressed.
Fatimah noted that before the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, ECCE classes were conducted physically (face-to-face) and character building was developed through planned measures or integrated in other activities especially during informal lessons and through socialization courses.
“However, with the ongoing pandemic, a lot of classes, even for ECCE, have shifted online and character building has become a great challenge in the new norm.
The Dalat assemblywoman pointed out that preschools in Sarawak had been given the approval to operate since June 26 following stringent standard operating procedures (SOPs) from the ministry.
She revealed that as of that date, there were 381 preschools operating with 2,789 educators and caregivers and a total of 16,831 children.
Fatimah hoped that Sarawak, as well as the rest of the world, would soon transition from a pandemic to an endemic stage of Covid-19 and advised that everyone to prepare to live with Covid-19 as the new normal.
“In preparing for the recovery stage, we have to ensure that all our teachers and staff of Early Childhood Institutions are vaccinated.
“So far, through our partnership with the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) and Vaccination Centres throughout the state, 98.08 percent (9,938 out of the total number 10,133) teachers and staff of early childhood institutions in Sarawak have been vaccinated,” she revealed.
