Parents Struggle as Armenian Nurseries Close

Saturday, 4 December, 2010

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Olga Yesayan

Armenians are finding it hard to return to work because kindergartens are closing down and places for pre-school children are becoming harder to find.

The universal kindergarten provision of the Soviet era became a casualty of the economic crisis that followed the collapse of communism in 1991.

By 1996, when kindergartens were handed over to local authorities to manage, more than one in ten had already closed. Municipal and village administrations were unable to afford their upkeep, and the decline has been even sharper since then.

Only 30 of the 94 districts in Armavir region, for example, now provide nurseries. Parents there are reluctant to entrust their children to those that remain.

“I really want my children to go to a decent nursery so they can interact with their peers and learn something new,” mother-of-two Karine Mkhitaryan, 26, told IWPR. “If I knew they’d be in safe hands, I could find myself a job with a clear conscience. But sadly I don’t have that option.”

Her local kindergarten in the village of Nalbandyan is in poor condition, and the food given to the children is poor quality.

Some 55 children are currently attending the Nalbandyan kindergarten. Built in 1970, it still has lockers from Soviet times, although the doors on many have fallen off, plus some old desks, a ragged carpet and a few toys. Even the water supply is intermittent.

“Of course, the head says staff are doing all they can to keep everything clean. But they can’t work miracles when there are no decent toilets, and when the children have to play in the courtyard and roll about on the ground all summer, since there isn’t a decent hall with toys inside,” Mkhitaryan said.

Some experts say the government was right to abolish the centralised system for pre-school education, and that advanced countries generally run nurseries at local level. However, the reform in Armenia was implemented at a time when local authorities did not have the money to cover costs.

Gayane Sayadyan, head of Armavir region’s education department, sees decentralisation as the root of all the problems with pre-school provision – the lack of heating, decent food, new furniture, and more.

“Municipalities don’t have the financial resources to provide for all the kindergartens’ needs,” she said. “When funds are issued to village administrations, the sum that must be earmarked for education needs to be specified.”

Sayadyan says six kindergartens in Armavir region have been refurbished and had their heating systems repaired in the last three years, thanks to charity organisations.

Heating is a major problem for kindergartens, and only a handful in Armavir can keep going through the winter. In urban areas, they take a three-month break, while some in the villages stop for as long as seven months.

This means they are little help to parents trying to find work or hold down a job.

Psychologists like Lilit Grigoryan say such interruptions can also cause problems for children by disruption the process of adaptation and integration into education.

Despite assurances from the Nalbanyan kindergarten’s director, Susanna Ghukasyan, that it will reopen after the winter break, some parents will not be sending their children back there.

Armine Manukyan, for example, said she was concerned about sanitary conditions there, and also the fact that her son had found it hard to fit in.

Government officials said they were unaware of allegations of insanitary conditions at kindergartens. The issue seems to fall between the cracks in a system where kindergartens are run at local level but regulated overall by the education ministry.

Since the government does not force municipalities to provide adequate funding, Ghukasyan is placing her hopes in the local government chief in Nalbandyan.

“The head of the village administration has promised to help solve our problems during his term,” she said. “But they also say they haven’t got the funds to do everything at once.”

Olga Yesayan is a freelance reporter in Armenia.