Importance of pre-primary education was not very much socially recognised before the advent of the nineteenth century. Upto the 18th century it was thought that during early years of life the parents were best suited to look after the education of their young ones.
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But due to the impact of industrial revolution this idea was discarded and the parents began to feel the necessity of sending their children to schools. This urge was also there because of the pressure that both the mother and father should earn in order to make their life more comfortable as demands of life were ever-increasing.
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Hence women also began to take up outside jobs along with men. This situation created the necessity of developing some such institutions which might take care of young children while the mothers were away at work.
These institutions gradually sprang up at various places according to the pressing social demands. These places were entrusted with the responsibility of teaching young ones the elementary Reading, Writing and arithmetic.
Thus a wave of social demands gave rise to the idea of the pre-primary education. The women while going to work in office or factories used to leave their young ones at these places and pick them back while coming back home after offices or factory hours. In the beginning no time-table was fixed up for teaching such young children.
The main job of such places was to look after the natural necessities of admitted children and to arrange for their food and minimum comforts. Gradually, these places were transformed into certain formalities and they began to take the 3hape or infant classes or small schools.
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Pestalozzi, Froebel and Maria Montessori did pioneer work in organising infant education in nursery or pre-primary schools. Thanks to their efforts that today all over the world, running of infant classes, nursery and pre-primary schools has become a fashion of the day and now most of the parents try to get relief from the burden of looking after their young ones and teaching them the preliminary reading, writing and arithmetic.
By and by the conviction gained ground that the period between early three years to six years of age is very important in the development of a child. Hence importance of nursery or pre-primary education has been recognised.
To-day most of the parents prefer to send their children to pre-primary schools whether both the mother and father have to be out for their jobs or only one of them has to go out for this purpose. It has now become a status symbol for many parents to be able to send their young children for pre-primary education.
As a result, there is a mushroom growth of pre-primary or nursery schools at several places in various countries. So it has become now difficult to believe whether such pre-primary institutions were started only for the infants of working mothers.
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In the beginning the charge of pre-primary education has been under private hands, but now in some countries the governments have also accepted some formal responsibility for running pre-primary and nursery schools directly or giving adequate financial assistance to private bodies for running them smoothly.