Preschool education or Infant education is the provision of education for children before the commencement of statutory and obligatory education, usually between the ages of zero or three and five, depending on the jurisdiction.
In British English, nursery school or simply "nursery" or playgroup is the usual term for preschool education, although the term preschool is also commonly used. In the United States preschool and Pre-K are used, while "nursery school" is an older term.
Preschool work is organized within a framework that professional educators create. The framework includes structural (administration, class size, teacher-child ratio, services, etc.), process (quality of classroom environments, teacher-child interactions, etc), and alignment (standards, curriculum, assessments) components that are associated with each individual unique child that has both social and academic outcomes. Arguably the first pre-school institution was opened in 1816 by Robert Owen in New Lanark, Scotland. The Hungarian countess Theresa Brunszvik followed in 1828. In 1837, Friedrich Fröbel opened one in Germany, coining the term "kindergarten".