Calls mount to speed up reopening of kindergartens

AMMAN — Kindergarten owners and families on Tuesday called on the government to speed up the process of reopening their establishments, to ease up the life of working parents.

The calls were made during a press conference that was held by the National Campaign to Reopen Kindergartens (NCRK) at the Jordan Press Foundation headquarters in Amman.

The participants stressed the need to reopen the kindergarten sector under the health procedures and protocols, while ensuring safety conditions and standards, as the nursery sector was opened recently by the government.

The speakers stressed during the press conference that there were “very few reported COVID-19 incidents among the age group that would be admitted to nurseries, reaching only 1 per cent”.

Parents should be given the freedom to choose whether to send their children to kindergartens or not, they said,

The NCRK coordinator, Dima Qaisi, said the campaign has adopted many steps since the beginning of the pandemic with the aim of reopening the kindergarten sector.

“The lockdown resulted in mental, psychological and social damage to children and remote learning is not the most effective learning method for children of this age,” Qaisi told the press conference.

The remote learning, Qaisi maintained, has caused computer vision syndrome among many children and “caused them mental and psychological damage because they had to sit behind the screens for a long time”.

It also reflected negatively on the family, “especially on many mothers who were forced to quit their jobs to stay home and take care of their children and their education”, Qaisi added.

Qaisi also said that a cyber campaign will be initiated on Wednesday with the aim of emphasising the need to return to work in the kindergarten sector.

The campaign is conducted in coordination with the International Labour Organisation and supported by SADAQA organisation and a large number of teachers, fathers and mothers.

The Private School Owners Association’s (PSOA) President Monther Sorani had recently told The Jordan Times that there are between 1500 to 1600 kindergartens in the Kingdom that were closed in March, then opened briefly in September, before being ordered to shut its doors again.

The PSOA president added that this brief opening, which lasted almost two weeks in September, “created chaos and frustration for both the parents and the owners”.

Meanwhile, the participants at the press conference referred to a study that was published recently in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, which pointed out to 16 studies that were conducted on children and teenagers who are exposed to two to three hours of computer screen on a daily basis.

The study revealed that this affected this group negatively, especially in their learning capabilities, their memory skills, behaviour and academic development.