Education and Science, Labour-market, Latvia, Society

This is part of new initiatives that the Education and Science Ministry is currently working on, said Sadurskis.

For children to start school at six in the 2018/2019 school year, the education standard will have to be changed by adapting it to the needs and abilities of six-year-olds, emphasized Sadurskis.

Several participants in the meeting said they feared that not all children would be prepared well enough to start school at the age of six.

The current requirements on first-graders will have to be changed so that children could start school at six, said Sadurskis.

One of the reasons for the reform is the economic situation in the country as Latvia cannot afford to have people going to school at the age of nineteen, stressed Sadurskis. On the other hand, the duration of schooling is impossible to reduce, he explained.