22

Curriculum

Of the 64 countries and territories who supplied data in this section, 38 (59%) indicated the existence of a national core curriculum or syllabus for initial education. Allied to this, 47 countries and territories provided data on the proportion of time spent on science-based laboratory learning in the core curriculum, which ranged from 6% to 70%, with a sample mean of around 36% - one third of curriculum time spent on laboratory-based learning. Figure 3.12 provides a description of the distribution of core curriculum time spent on laboratory science.

Figure 3.12: Laboratory science learning time (% of core curriculum) | n= 47.

Respondents provided a description of the curriculum, according to pre-set categories, as shown in Table 3.6. There were no associations with these self-declared categories and geographical region. The geographic distribution is shown in Figure 3.13.

Table 3.6: Early years curriculum general description.

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