Starting next January, every child in Ireland, aged between three years three months and four years six months on September 1 in any year, will benefit from the new pre-school care and education year being introduced by the Government.
Speaking about the scheme, Cllr Aengus O’Rourke said “The provision of a year’s free pre-school to all children will promote equality of opportunity at the most important development stage of children’s lives. The real winners are the more disadvantaged and marginalised children in our society who do not currently benefit from pre-school care and education. It will help reduce the current inequity whereby not all children come to primary school with the same level of education preparedness.”
He continued “I warmly welcome this government initiative as a huge social advance. Its significance is reinforced by recently published information showing that at 7.4 per cent we have the highest proportion of pre-school children aged 0-4 years in our population than any of the 27 member states of the EU.”
