IPOH: The Permata Pintar Negara early education and day-care programme has come out with guidelines to help private day-care operators share its syllabus.
The guidelines include those relating to facilities, standard operating procedures and activities for the children, said executive committee chairman Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor.
She said Permata had received enquiries from several private day-care centres wanting to adopt its programme.
“When they adopt our programmes, they have to train their people.
“That is a must, if not, they will not understand what Permata is all about,” she told reporters after opening the Permata day-care centre in Bercham here yesterday.
Ten more centres, costing a total of RM3.6mil, would be set up in Perak during the 10th Malaysia Plan period, she said.
Rosmah said the programme had not got off in certain states as there was no cooperation from the state governments concerned. She declined to name the states.
IPOH, July 24 – The Permata early childhood education and care programme has documented several curriculum guidelines to standardise the activities and quality of indoor and outdoor learning for the children.
The Prime Minister’s wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, who is the National Permata Policy executive committee chairman, said among the guidelines were those pertaining to outdoor equipment, implementation of Anak Permata activities and other documents which would be made standard operating procedures for Permata.
“This initiative is taken with the aim of raising the standard and quality of childhood education and care.
“We have taken the initiative to document several guidelines to assist implementors who are interested to adopt the Permata curriculum,” she said at the launch of Bercham Permata here today.
Rosmah said apart from emphasizing on quality education, the guidelines also emphasized on suitable and effective strategies to nurture unity.
She said to ensure that the adopted curriculum not only offered good childhood education and care, the Permata curriculum had also been added with elements of cultural diversification and creative thinking.
Rosmah said the federal government had also allocated RM3.64 million to all state governments to expand the implementation of Permata programme this year.
With the allocation, she said the number of Permata nurseries nationwide would increase to 647 within two years of its establishment in 2008.
“Last year alone, the Permata programme had shown tremendous improvement with the setting up of 427 nurseries nationwide involving 17,000 children aged between one and four years,” she said.
On a different note, Rosmah called on the private sector to be extra sensitive to the needs and interests of persons with disabilities in providing any form of public facilities or services.
This was because many existing facilities and services offered did not take into consideration their interests to the extent of restricting their movements, she said.
“I would like to call on corporate sectors to help the government in taking care of persons with disabilities by making it part of their corporate social responsibility programmes.”
She said this when opening the Community Rehabilitation Centre (PDK) Products Sale Carnival and the state-level Prime Minister’s Cup talentime competition for persons with disabilities at the Perak Menteri Besar Residence here today.
Rosmah also hoped that more private companies would emulate the government in offering job opportunities to qualified and highly-skilled persons regardless of their disabilities. – Bernama