Nurseries and Pre-Schools
Qatar boasts a diversified nurseries and pre-schools base with a range of varied choices for the parents to choose from. Some nurseries and pre-schools focused on a certain segment of expatriate populations. Some are based on a specific curriculum or school system. Some are certified by an international body. Some are international branches or franchises of foreign based nurseries and pre-schools. Parents of young ones, therefore, have a wide range of nurseries and pre-schools to choose from based on their specific needs and demands.
Most of the expats focused schools offer nursery and pre-school to facilitate families who send their children to these community based schools. With a large South Asian population, expat schools like Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Nepalese curriculum schools mostly offer community compatible pre-schools. In addition, many Middle Eastern and North African based community schools like Lebanese, Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Moroccan schools offer pre-schools and daycare facilities. Many international schools based predominantly on the British or American curriculum system also offer preschool/kindergarten/playgroup levels.
The most common nurseries and pre-schools are the independently and privately run daycare centers which are dotted around the city on the roadsides. There are many of these nurseries and playgroups are often housed in a single house/ Villa with a small capacity. The advantage of these small scale nurseries is that with a limited capacity, individual attention and care for every child is possible. The downside though is that since small scale operations that these nurseries have don’t require a lot of capital investment to start, it has given birth to a huge number of these daycare centers popping up everywhere, resulting is increased competition among them which leads to multiple problems of overcrowding, lack of adequate space and facilities, compromised quality of education and health and safety guidelines oversight.
In recent years, the MoEHE has started to focus on preschool level by introducing stringent measures to curb the spread of low cost low quality nurseries and kindergartens. Regulating this level of education has raised the overall standard of these education centers.