Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
Early Childhood Association of Nigeria (ECAN) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari, governors of the 36 states and other levels of leadership in the country to invest in early childhood development, care and pre-primary education.
The association said the investment would help in eliminating extreme poverty ravaging the country with a view to boosting shared prosperity, and create the human capital needed for economy to diversify and grow.
ECAN made the call during its first virtual annual conference, hosted by the Department of Early Childhood and Educational Foundations, University of Ibadan with the theme: “Quality, Equitable, and Context-based Early Childhood Care and Pre-primary Education: The Journey to 2030.”
The communique issued at the end of the conference was signed by Amosun Moses, Olowe Peter and Olabisi Adedigba. It stated that early childhood development, care and pre-primary education is crucial to realising the full potential of a child and key to achieving sustainable society.
“Governments, at all levels, should give more attention to the programme of early childhood development, care and pre-primary education through thír representative bodies such as UBEC and Federal Ministry of Women Affairs.
“To ensure continuous access of the Nigerian child to the programme in the face of the current coronavirus pandemic, key stakeholders, including the government, early childhood education practitioners, faculties, and non-governmental organisations, should come up with other approaches and platforms such as community-based ECCDE programme, parental empowerment to offer responsive caregiving and deployment of qualified ECE social workers to rural areas,” the communique read in part.
The early childhood education professionals also called for the creation of separate ministry or government body for the programme of early childhood development, care and pre-primary education to allow effective implementation, monitoring and management.
ECAN said the curriculum used for the programme at pre-primary and tertiary education levels should be reorganised to sufficiently feature culturally-relevant contents and ways of learning in the indigenous society.