By JOHN ONAH, Abuja –
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that about 64 per cent of Nigerian children between 0 to 5 years of age do not attend Early Childhood Education (ECE), which the UN agency said is a critical foundation for all forms of child learning.
UNICEF Education Specialist, Yetunde Oluwatosin, disclosed this on Thursday in Sokoto at a two-day media dialogue on Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Nigeria organised by the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
According to her, globally 1 in 3 children are enrolled in pre-primary education while in Nigeria only 36 per cent of children attend early childhood education accounting for 1 in every 3 children.
Quoting the 2018 National Personnel Audit (NPA) report conducted by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Oluwatosin lamented that wide disparity exists between rich households accounting for 78 per cent attendance and children from poor households where only 8 per cent attend early childhood education.
She said the situation was worsen by the fact that there is low public spending on early childhood education in spite of the huge benefits for child development and the nation’s economic growth, adding that at least over 10 million school-age children are not enrolled in Nigeria.
She noted that with the current statistics, Nigeria is far from achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while also listing some of the barriers to early childhood education to include, lack of data for effective planning, lack of infrastructure and limited play-based facilities within the school environment as well as a shortage of trained teachers to handle early learners in the country.
She further noted that from the NPA report, Nigeria has over 7 million learners in early childhood education to 154,000 available teachers.
“This pupils/teachers ratio is low, and we must do something to improve this. This disparity is there, and we are still far behind in achieving the SDG goals,” she said.
She called on the Federal Government to take steps to reposition early childhood education in Nigeria to make it a strong and resilient national system in development and humanitarian context.
UNICEF Communication Specialist, Dr Geoffrey Njoku, in his remark tasked the Nigerian media to create space for issues relating to children, stressing that ECE remains the bedrock of a child’s development and that attention must be focused on ensuring that children are exposed to learning at an early stage for proper brain development.
He also noted that now that politicians are campaigning for the 2023 general elections, candidates should be able to tell Nigerians what they plan to do to address the concerns about the rights of children, one of them is the issue of early childhood education that is not given adequate attention in the country.
The representative of the Federal Ministry of Education,….however, said the Federal Government in recognition of the importance of early childhood education approved 5 per cent of the 2 per cent Consolidated Revenue Fund allocated to UBEC, to fund the one-year pre-primary education in the country.
She noted because education is on the concurrent list, the Federal Government could only intervene while providing the necessary impetus for the development of early childhood education in Nigeria, including a robust play-based curriculum has been developed by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in collaboration with UNICEF.
The Country Director of Early Childhood Development Initiative (ECDI) in Nigeria, Dr Amy Panyi, said there was a need to promote early childhood education to open up a world for children where everything is possible.
According to her, pre-primary education is the best way for a child to learn, adding that the play-based class allow children to explore, innovate, learn to collaborate and build their confidence in critical thinking among others.
Also, the Director, of Early Child Education in Sokoto State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Faruk Umar, disclosed that the State has over 500 ECE centres in some public schools across the state while being the only state in Nigeria to establish a full-fledged department of Early Child Education
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