The Transition of the Children from the Preschool Institutions to the Primary School in the Kosovo

Many countries’ systems have regulated the issue of the transition of the children from preschool to primary school, whether by law, regulation, or something like this. Kosovo is a state formed in the 2008, namely the education system of the Kosovo has faced many challenges and problems, especially in the field of the pre-school education, such as the lack of adequate documents for the pre-school education, and the low inclusion of the children in the pre-school institutions, etc. Regarding these issues is the lack of a strategy that will improve the transition of the children from preschool education to the primary schools. In this research, we will examine how the preschool institutions collaborate with primary schools in the Kosovo for the registration of the children in the first grade, whether they have any documents that the children convey from preschool institution to the primary school.

Results of publication (only one response allowed): Xare still valid.
 were found to be overall invalid.
Author's conduct (only one response allowed):  honest error  academic misconduct Xnone (not applicable in this casee.g. in case of editorial reasons)

Introduction
The preschool institutions in Kosovo, as a form of education for the children of preschool age, date back to the beginning of the last century, specifically from the middle of the twentieth century.
If we consider that Kosovo as a state was created in 2008, we can say that the preschool institutions in the Kosovo date back much earlier, a century before the declaration of independence of her, the first institution in the Kosovo dates back to 1907 (Rexhepagiq, 2002), however, despite this fact, the preschool education tion, lack of inclusion of the children with special needs in the preschool education, the functioning of the private non-licensed preschool institutions, etc.This long list also adds the transfer of the children from the preschool institutions to the first grade of the primary school.
This template, created in MS Word 2007, provides authors with most of the formatting specifications needed for preparing electronic versions of their papers.All standard paper components have been specified for three reasons: 1) ease of use when formatting individual papers, 2) automatic compliance to electronic requirements that facilitate the concurrent or later production of electronic products, and 3) conformity of style throughout a journal paper.Margins, column widths, line spacing, and type styles are built-in; examples of the type styles are provided throughout this document and are identified in italic type, within parentheses, following the example.Some components, such as multi-leveled equations, graphics, and tables are not prescribed, although the various table text styles are provided.The formatter will be needed to create these components, incorporating the applicable criteria that follow.

Review of the Literature
The term "early childhood care and education" (ECCD) refers to a range of processes and mechanisms that sustain, support and aid in the holistic development of children, from age 3 years to 5 years.Due to the rapid neural connections, brain development and growth that take place at this age, this period is considered a critical window of opportunity for optimizing children's development through the combined impact of education, care, health, nutrition, protection and stimulation (NCCA, 2017).
The transition from preschool to primary school is very important for children and the literature notes that the transfer of information using templates or portfolios is a key part of this complex process (O'Kane, 2016) therefore, the transition from one level of education to the next level, namely in our case the transition from pre-school to primary school, is considered a transition phase.
The move from ECEC to primary education is one of the transition phases that children face in their early years.Almost all European countries have issued  , 2014).Some other countries have regulated the issue of transition through cooperation with the family.The most common measures include having parents stay alongside their child during the first few weeks and/or progressively increasing the time the child spends in the setting (e.g.Spain, Hungary, Malta and Slovenia).The aim of such measures is twofold: they help the child adapt to the new environment and new people, and they also allow relationships between staff and parents to develop (Eurydice and Eurostat, 2014).In the same report, the fact is noted that in some systems, the last year of pre-primary focuses on readiness for school (e.g. in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Lithuania and Liechtenstein), and in some cases records on children's maturity and readiness for school are kept.Where this occurs, the records may be made available to primary teachers, with a view to easing children's integration into primary education (e.g. in Bulgaria and Lithuania) (Eurydice and Eurostat, 2014).Seeing as a transition phase the transition from pre-school to primary school, finally activities facilitating the transition from pre-primary to primary level may include children's visits to primary schools while they are still in ECEC, in order to become acquainted with their new learning environment (e.g.
in Belgium, Flemish Community and Slovakia).Close cooperation between staff of both levels through joint projects and activities is also developed (e.g. in Portugal, Iceland and Norway) as well as cooperation between staff and parents (e.g. in Slovakia, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) (Eurydice and Eurostat, 2014), thing, that doesn't happen in Kosovo.
Among others, in some countries such as in Belgium (all Communities) and France, pre-primary and primary education is often provided on the same premises to facilitate the transition for children as well as to improve staff coopera- Zealand.These are used by many primary teachers to learn more about the child's strengths and interests.While they require mutual understanding of this way of documenting learning, portfolios do allow the child's voice to be heard in a meaningful way as they make the transition to primary school (O'Kane, 2016).

R E T R A C T E D
Compare with other countries, Kosovo didn't have any politics that connect the preschool education with primary school.The only criterion for the enrolment children's in the first grade, as we have mention before, is the age of the child, so in Kosovo we not have connection between these levels of education.

Method
The purpose of this research was to understand how is done the transfer or enroll of the preschool children to primary school in the Kosovo.In this research we have used the quantitative method, as part of this research were involved 58 educators of the preschool institutions, and 43 the primary school teachers from all cities of the Kosovo, who completed the questionnaires on the above mentioned problem.Also, we used the qualitative method, in which we have uses the semi structure interviews with 2 directors of the preschool institutions and 2 directors of the primary schools (Table 1).
The quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously using mainly the closed questions but there were also open questions.We have made the descriptive analysis to look deeper into the problem.
In order to get as much information as possible, the qualitative data were transferred to the quantitative data to describe how enroll the children in the first grade of the primary school in the Kosovo.

Finding and Discussions
For portfolios purposes, clear ideas give a group of authors (Wortham, Barbour, & Desjean-Perrotta, 1998) when highlighting that the portfolio, helped us, among other things, to see multiple processes in different aspects of child development.
Table 2 gives us information about the perceptions of educators regarding how they understand the portfolio, where we see that 32.8% of them think that it is "A summary of all child labor at the preschool institution", 25.9% of them claim that it is a job documentation and child's development in the IP, 17.2% responds that "important because it should be included in elementary school", 15.5% gave us this answer "Important because it must be included in primary school" only 8.6% of them didn't have answer.
To understand more about the perceptions of educators for the portfolio, a descriptive analysis has been carried out, and according to Table 3, we understand that the average response was 2.6379 (DS = 1.43513).
From the above results we understand that educators perceive the portfolio as important, for the fact that it was stressed by them that it "is a summary of all From semi-structured interviews with the directors of pre-school institutions, from 63% of them was emphasized that since from 2014, in the portfolio of children in the preschool institutions, the document called the Observation Protocol was implemented and implemented.
The portfolios were also highlighted by semi-structured interviews with preschool institutions directors, in which 82.6% agree with the idea of transferring portfolios from preschool institutions to the elementary school concretely: "Portfolios are important for student assessment when coming to first grade".
The strategy of tracking children's portfolios from pre-school education in primary schools is a strategy implemented by many European countries such as: Finland, for whose education system it is known to be one of the countries with the most successful education system based on the PISA results (2015), Sweden, Bulgaria, Lithuania, then paraphrasing an EU report ( 2014), Greece has joined this strategy since 2014, while from a report published by SABER-ECD (2015) same situation is also the case in Macedonia.
Using portfolios to document and evaluate children's learning is a feature of preschools in New Zealand.These are used by many elementary school teachers to learn more about the child's strengths and interests (O'Kane, 2016).
In our research, we also analyzed the educators' perceptions about the importance of the children's portfolios in the preschool institutions.
For the importance of children's portfolios, general frequency analysis has been performed.From the data in Table 4 we see that 53.4% of educators claim that the portfolio is extremely important, 36.2% of them stated that the children's portfolio is very important, 6.9% said they were important, while only 3.4% stated neutral.There were no other answers for the other options.
Research findings from the survey statistics show that the average response to the importance of portfolios by the educators was 1.6034 (DS = .77096)(Table 5).
The transition from preschool to primary school is very important for children and the literature notes that the transfer of information using templates or portfolios is a key part of this complex process (O'Kane, 2016).
From our research, concretely from semi-structured interviews with directors of pre-school institutions and primary school directors, 100% of them claim that they do not have co-operation on the registration of the children in the first grade.
From the questionnaire realized with primary school teachers regarding what documents should be brings parents when registering their children in the first grade, we got the following results: out of the total of 43 teachers, 83.7% of them said that parents should to bring the certificate of childbirth and the certificate of residence, while 16.2% of them said that parents should only bring the certificate of childbirth.These data are presented in Table 6.
For this question was also drawn up descriptive statistics where the average response to this question was 1.3653 (DS = .12752)(Table 7).

R E T R A
C T E D Based on the practices of the aforementioned states, and based on our research, Kosovo does not have any regulations or policies that link the pre-school level with the primary school.
From our research, concretely from semi-structured interviews with directors of pre-school institutions and primary school directors, 100% of them claim that they do not have co-operation on the registration of the children in the first grade.

Recommendations
Considering that preschool age is a very important age for the development of a personality, in this part of our research, we will talk about the recommendations that emerged as a result of this study.Based on the strategies of educational systems of the most developed countries in the world, we can conclude that the cooperation of educational institutions between different levels, is very important.We recommended that:

R E T R A C T E D
-Draw up the education policies by Ministry of the Education, Science and Technology, which would focus on co-operation between pre-school and primary education levels.So initially, Ministry of the Education, Science and Technology should draw up education policies that will focus on linking or co-operating between preschool education and primary schools in general, then providing specific strategies for Municipal Education Directorate related to the issue at hand.
-Ministry of the Education, Science and Technology to do templates or portfolios format specifically by experts in certain fields that would summarize the complete follow-up of child labor in preschool institutions.This template should be emphasized that it should be supplemented by the pedagogical and psychological service of pre-school institutions and the same should be taken from elementary school on the occasion of registration of children in first grade.So there has communication between preschool institutions and elementary schools through portfolios.
-In the long-term strategies envisaged by Ministry of the Education, Science and Technology, emphasis should be placed on the implementation of portfolios in the two levels of education, i.e. pre-school education and primary education.
-We recommend that in the Law on Primary Education in Kosovo, as a condition for the registration of children in the first grade of elementary school, not just criter of age, but it to introduce also a point that will make it necessary to get portfolios of children from their preschool education.
-To issue special regulations from the highest institutions of education in Kosovo that would regulate the issue of transferring portfolios from pre-school institutions to primary schools.
-To develop educational policies by the Municipal Education Directorate that would emphasize the importance of cooperation between preschool institutions and primary schools.
-We recommend that awareness raising campaigns be launched for teachers of primary schools regarding the importance of child portfolios as a basic element for the registration of children in first grade.
Eurydice and Eurostat, 2014), despite the fact that states like Iceland and Norway (2014) the transition phase regulate into the curriculum.Similarly, in Liechtenstein, the structure of the common curricula ensures continuity of learning between pre-primary and primary education(Eurydice and Eurostat,   Sweden and Iceland, etc.Age, as the only criterion for registration of children in the first grade, in this rank of states, we have to in- A. Hajrullahu DOI: 10.4236/ce.2019.101015193 Creative Education tion (clude Kosovo, because with the Law on Primary Education at the moment, in point 2 of Article 9 of Law no.Nr. 04/L-032, it is said 2. Compulsory education starts at the beginning of the school year after the date the child reaches six (6) years of age who is the minimum age for compulsory education and ends at the end of Level 2 of ISCED.Level 2, according to this law, includes 1.3.Level 2: Low Secondary Education lasting four (4) years (normally from the age of twelve (12) years) (MEST, 2011).It is worth mentioning the experience of Macedonia, where on a report, published by SABER-ECD (2015) states that Macedonia tracks several domains of individual children's development.As of 2014, every child enrolled in an ECCE center has a child development portfolio.The portfolio contains tools to track the child's development based on the Early Learning and Development Standards framework adopted in Macedonia (SABER-ECD, 2015).Always according to the above document, these cover the physical, cognitive, language, and social development domains.Checklists and notes in the portfolio document the child's strengths, abilities and interests.Preschool teachers use this information to adjust the curriculum and teaching.The information conveys children's school readiness, is used to smooth the transition from preschool to primary school (SABER-ECD, 2015).However, in Macedonia, the inclusion of children in pre-school education is low, it should be noted that less than one-fourth of children in Macedonia attend preprimary school, so most children do not have a child development portfolio (SABER-ECD, 2015).tended pre-primary institutions are assessed, while in Estonia a child's development is taken into account if parents request a year's deferment (Eurydice and Eurostat, 2014).Another practice is offered by New Zealand.The use of portfo-R E T R A C T E D A. Hajrullahu DOI: 10.4236/ce.2019.101015194 Creative Education lios to document and assess children's learning is a feature of preschools in New

Table 1 .
The sample on the preschools institutions and the sample on the primary schools.

Table 2 .
In your words, please let us know how you understand the children's portfolio.

Table 4 .
How do you rate the children's portfolio?

Table 6 .
Perceptions about the documents that children bring to enrollment in the first grade.

Table 7 .
The descriptive statistics.