Nursery Schools in Changing Social Conditions

CAPE ARGUS - 1939, January 16

The Cape Peninsula has had an enviable reputation for the quality of its schools since the days when the late Sir Thomas Muir was director of the Cape Education Department and brought highly trained teachers to the country to organize the schools and training colleges. Most of these teachers he imported from Scotland, where the standard of education was high, and the thoroughness of their methods soon made its mark on Cape education.

As the city has extended and its population increased the number of schools has multiplied accordingly. The decision to make the age of school attendance six and to start the Government schools at Standard 1 has led to the opening of a great number of private nursery and kindergarten schools. These have been opened in neighbourhoods where there are many households with young children. The children have not far to travel to school and their attendance is not the strain on the time of the parents that it would be at a central school.

The increase of quick traffic on the roads has made it impossible for young children to go unattended if the school is any distance from the home or if there are main thoroughfares to be crossed. These kindergarten schools frequently take the child to the third or fourth standard, and by that time the child’s traffic sense should be sufficiently trained to enable him to go back and forth to the high school in safety.

NURSERY TRAINING

The nursery school for children from two years old to the kindergarten stage is something new and has been necessitated by our changing social conditions. Families are smaller than in the few generations previous and the mother’s interests are no longer bounded by her home and children. Many families live in flats or in small houses with gardens hardly adequate for play. Well-trained nursemaids are hard to come by and they are an expense that many families cannot afford.

To help parents out of all these difficulties the nursery school has come into fashion, and that it is likely to flourish must be the belief of the Society for the Protection of Child Life, which is opening a training school for nursery school teachers at the end of February.

The training school will be combined with a nursery school and both will be housed in a new building in the grounds of the Lady Buxton Home, Paradise Estate, Claremont.

Applications are invited from young women who wish to take the teacher’s course in pre-school education. The full course covers a period of three years, but this period may be shortened according to the educational qualifications of the applicant. The training course and syllabus has the approval and blessing of the Union Education Department. The fees for the student teachers are £21 a term and include the midday meal. Twelve students can be trained at the same time. The nursery school has accommodation for 40 children, who must be between the ages of two and six years. The school provides medical inspection and advice, well-balanced meals, sufficient daily rest, play facilities and companions of a like age.

Read more about LADY BUXTON HOME - one of the most established Educare and Pre-Primary Centres in the Peninsula, providing a safe, secure and structured environment in which the child is nurtured and allowed to develop holistically in order to reach its full potential - https://www.rainbowkids.co.za/lady-buxton-centre.html