Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

here, it is a good cooperation. We paid for the dance teacher but they had a lot of fun, it is part of a three year
cultural project and we include it in the big evaluation of the school. We use the evaluation to generate a plan.
We regularly evaluate each other’s work each semester as they were worried creative things were not being
evaluated but now we want to share it with parents and teachers. We found it to be valuable to share our school plan
with the whole school community. We are producing a book of the plan including our philosophy explaining to the
parents why we do things as we do it. I think when it is in the book this fumes interest. They browse through the book
and then they want to discuss things with us. We also hold some regular festivals. The professional development of
our staff has also been part of the plan. A lot of our teachers are not qualified so we have encouraged them to do
their diplomas via distance learning; we decided this was important in our five year development plan. We have also
employed a reading specialist and we have 15 percent less teaching than other school to promote professional
development.
Parents have to personally pay for their child to come to this school on top of all the government funding. We will
need to increase the level of payment for next year, twice a week a music teacher comes in and we have cooperation
with a music school. The music school teacher comes in twice a week and we work with the children. We have two
groups for the five year olds and one group for the four year olds. We ask the parents to pay a top-up fee for these
music lessons; they pay roughly 25 to 20 percent of the total costs. For example one hour cost about 2530 ISK and we
times that by eight to give the monthly fee and that includes everything. We give a 30 percent discount though to
single parents.
We all want to do creative stuff and even though we are doing it we want to do more and therefore we try to do
something new each year. We want to combine experiences and work with more creative experiences. Every spring
they have a festival in the school where we exhibit and perform and we always do something artistic for these, then
we call it a cultural festival. But I think training in the early years is a big problem there is not enough experience.
What we do is take a book and work through that or we may take a nation as a theme and work through that. We try
to involve parents as much as possible in our theme.
The following preschool (vignette 1.9.4) has a large enrolment (140 children). The preschool
has a strong commitment to the arts and also a focus on environmental and imaginative
education. Every child has a portfolio that is used to evaluate the children’s progress and record
their achievements in a rich and vibrant manner. The school works actively with other
preschools to increase creative learning. The staff bemoaned the lack of continuing professional
development courses (in-service courses) that allow teachers to develop skills in teaching
creatively with the arts. The director was also critical of the reductions in preschool teacher’s
pre-service training in terms of artistic and communication development.
Vignette 1.9.4Almost everything we do is arts related
There are 140 children in the preschool. The centre is based in a lower income area with a number of young families.
The pre-primary school adopts an experimental method believing that children learn from doing. They make a lot of
use of the immediate environment and also the nearby forest.
The children are encouraged to access their own resources, and despite being very young, the children are confident
with glue, scissors and pencils. They have music teachers on the staff and music and dance are very important. They
make their own instruments and use locally found and available materials. They have at least 3 hours per day outside
play. The children do group singing for 15 minutes throughout the day. Classical music and fairy tales also play while
the children play and work.
They have a parents' day 4 times a year and women’s and men’s days twice a year. They keep a portfolio of every
child’s progress.
Although there is a compulsory school next to the pre-primary school, they have struggled to build a closer connection
with the school. The pre-primary school head teacher explains, “We do not do enough visits to the compulsory school.
They do not have enough time for us. They have very strict timetables”. Each year the Parents’ Association pay for a
children’s performance group to come to the school. These professional performances usually cost around 40,000 ISK.
The parents choose the play or performance.
We have introduced photography into the school. We take the children around the area a lot too. The bus is free so
we go to amateur theatre, the library and the symphony. You have to make the best of what is around you. Our
parents are very supportive.
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