Four million crowns to increase competence
Every year the municipality applies for a certain sum of money to contribute to measures to raise the standard in pre-schools. Pre-schools in Östra Göinge received a total of almost four million crowns in 2022.
– The idea is to improve standards in pre-schools. There are guidelines to follow, for example that children aged from one to three should be in groups of six to twelve, for four- and five-year-olds the groups can have between nine and fifteen children, says Louise Wendel, head of the department for classes 0 to 9 in Östra Göinge municipality.
– These are guidelines we have, but they're not obligatory. We try to follow the guidelines, and then we see to the needs of the children.
The state grant the pre-schools get is divided in two, where the municipality gets 764,000 crowns in August and just over 3 million crowns in April.
– It is used specifically to improve quality, which can include in-service courses for teachers and steps to retain or recruit staff to the pre-school, says Louise.
The grants pre-schools have applied for are distributed in the course of the year. If the whole grant is not used up, the municipality must repay the surplus.
– If we do not use the whole grant, we must pay back what we have not used, she tells us.
How is the amount of the grant decided?
– There are a number of parameters we look at when we share out the grant. One factor is the socio-economic situation.
_ Other municipalities may have received different amounts than what we have.