The effect of the family and state policy on children's access to pre-school education

The thoughts and perspectives of the parents about the duties of pre-school education institutions, the reasons such as the sufficiency status of the promotion of the pre-school education are among the factors that affect children's access to education. Besides, the educational policies including the fact that 66-month-old children have the right to start the first grade and the fact that pre-school education is a paid education and it is not a compulsory education can debar children from pre-school education. This situation also shows that it is against the notion of equal opportunity in education which is among the fundamental rights of children. As it is understood from these explanations, the two fundamental factors in children's access to pre-school education are the family status and contribution, and educational policies. It seems to be important to generate solutions for all children to benefit from education by discussing the obstacles to access pre-school education. This study was carried out to reveal the role and importance of educational policies and the family in the access of the children being at pre-school age to education. In this study, the qualitative research method was used. The study group of this research consists of 9 principals, 10 pre-school teachers, 15 families that send their children to school and 15 families that do not send their children to school in 2019, Konyaaltı, Muratpaşa and Kepez districts of Antalya province. In this study, semi-structured interview form as a data gathering technique was used. During the interview, the voice was recorded and then the voice recordings were turned into text. Content analysis were carried out for the data obtained. At the end of the research, it was determined that awareness level of the families about the education, and their socio-economic conditions had an effect on the access of the children to the pre-school education. Moreover, it was observed that financial statuses of the families being aware of the importance of pre-school education did not have an effect on child's receiving pre-school education. While all of the participants emphasized that pre-school education certainly had to be compulsory, it was observed that they were not against the fact that it is a paid education. It was determined that moving the age of starting the first grade to an earlier time and not including pre-school education in compulsory education affected access to pre-school education in a negative way. It was also revealed that this situation conflicted with the principle of equal opportunity in education. Furthermore, it was concluded that pre-school education was not promoted sufficiently. Keywords: Pre-school Education, Access to Education, Equal Opportunity in Education