Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

This week I conversed through email with my contact in Australia as well as a newly formed contact in Germany. I had asked both professional what prevalent inequalities they see in early childhood education in their countries.

The professional contact from Australia talked about the inequality of there not being early childhood education available to all children. This was mostly due to the fact that some children live in far rural areas and cannot get to a preschool facility. She also discussed the fact that most mothers in her community work so children attend a “day care” and parents cannot “taxi” their child to a preschool facility. Finally she talked for quite awhile about pay for preschool professionals and that she felt Australia would have higher quality and more educated professionals in the field if they were paid a better wage.

Secondly I talked with a professional from Germany. She English was very broken so this conversation was more difficult to maintain. She stated that in her community many of the children went to the local Catholic Church for schooling. She also said that young children could take an exam to enter the school at a younger age. I am going to try to gain more information from her about that this week. She went on to say that “there is no much money for worker with young child.” In other words I think she feels the pay scale could improve.  

Over all it has been a very interesting conversation between the professionals from Australia and Germany and myself. I never imagined the differences and similarities I would see between the countries within their field.