MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OUT TO STEER EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Survey by the ministry of education reveals that enrollment for early childhood education and development (ECDE) has grown by 8 per cent since 2002 to 1.7 million up to date. It has 76,324 teachers as compared to 63,650 in 2002 and the number of centers have grown from 28,308 to 37,263. Private ECD centers have grown from 8,620 to 14,163 at the same time.

“This growth is a result of the ministry placing ECDE as one of those programme to be supported by the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP),” ECDE co-ordinator, Shabban Mohammed says, adding that “regional disparity is yet to bridged - the Northern Part of Kenya has a paltry of 20,000 registered children.”

“Experience has shown that children who start their schooling by attending ECDE tend to be more confident during their early days in primary schools than those who did not,”says Sarah Kinyanjui, assistant director of education – ECDE. The Ministry of education, Science and Technology Sessional Paper No. 1 of 2005 articulate that ECD provides a strong foundation for the children positive cognitive, psychosocial, emotional, moral, spiritual and physical needs and enhance their readiness for formal learning in primary schools thus able to transit with easy to primary school.

The Early Childhood Education Journal indicate that ECDE enhances primary school academic achievement - experiences gained contribute to higher performance in reading compression and math concept applications in their life long education.

“ECDE programme is implemented through partnership between communities, parents, civil society, private sector and the government,” Kinyanjui says, “in this collaboration, parents, local communities, local government, faith based organization and individuals manage the public ECDE centers while the government provides some grants especially in the poor districts to enable the centers develop the necessary facilities.”

Mohammed says that the ministry is main streaming ECDE to the education system whereby ECDE teachers will be employed by the TSC. “At the moment 4,000 ECDE centres are receiving Community Support Grant (CSG) for their running.”

Quality in teachers is fortified by the government covering the costs of the trainers and administering national examinations through the Kenya National examination Council (KNEC). “Teacher trainees are supposed to pay their training fees but a large number of ECD teachers cannot afford the necessary fees,” says Kinyanjui, “this explains why only 70.9 per cent of the teachers in ECD centers are formally trained.” This year 3,400 trainee for Diploma and 2,400 for certificate in ECDE were recruited. These are two year in-service courses are taught in public District Centres for Early Childhood Education (DICECE) - they began their training in the month of April. The entry level for ECD certificate has also improved upwards from a KCSE mean grade of D to D+ (plus).

However, KESSP, 2005-2010, programme dubbed as “Delivering Quality Education and Training to All Kenyans” indicate that “access to ECDE services remains low in Kenya with 65 percent of the children aged 3-6 years currently not accessing ECDE services. In ASAL areas this situation is much worse with only 9 percent of the children aged 3-6 accessing ECDE services.”

“In the Northern part of Kenya and coast province the ministry has started integrating ECDE with Madrass/Duksi thus children can learn the Koran along side ECDE programme,” says Mohammed, “in collaboration with UNICEF we're implementing a Rapid School Readiness initiative where children who have not gone through ECD are prepared via a crush programme for entry at the beginning of the year.” In ASAL regions they've put up mobile schools and Feeder centres for children to access ECDE without walking long distances.

To realize success in ECDE parents are called upon to provide care, security, protection and health and nutrition as the ministry provides policy guideline and the training of ECDE personnel.

According to Isaac Thuita, the ECD Investment Programme Manager, high level of poverty in rural areas and urban slums hinders children accessibility to ECD centers. This leads to disparity in proper introduction to learning and good start of life.“Most children from this vulnerable families bypass ECDE and progress directly to primary schools where they enjoy the benefits of Free Primary Education (FPE),” he says, adding “it is for this reason that the ministry plans to make ECDE part of basic education programme.”



“ECDE is a specialist learning where children learn by doing rather than reading,” Thuita says, “we've began a country wide community mobilization exercise targeting 2,000 ECDE stakeholders with the aim of making Kenyans aware of the importance of ECDE and to make them appreciate government effort in this sub-sector to ensure that many more children go through ECD centres before joining primary schools.”