Why nursery schooling is important

As we mark the beginning of a new year, we must reflect and ask whether after 13 years of commitment we are on track to achieving the six Education For All goals.
In 2000, governments around the world, Uganda inclusive, pledged to achieve six education goals by 2015 globally known as “Education for All Goals”.

The first goal, “Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children by 2015” is still a big question today. Two years to the countdown, Uganda still procrastinates to the full realisation according to the East African success stories told during the Early Childhood development evaluation symposium in Dar es salaam late last year.

Government must review the Early Childhood Development (ECD) policy, six years now since its launch in 2007. In spite of the five years already spent, millions of children are still not enrolled in early childhood education centres or nursery schools for pre–school initiatives instead they straight away join primary school, this practice has grave and regrettable impact on our country’s education products and finally the human capital. It also inflates primary school registers during school census and head count.

While we are aware that many of our children drop out before completing primary school, many more leave school having failed, the very failures and dropouts are responsible for the stunted enrolment in the rural areas where early childhood education centres are as scarce as employment in Uganda today.

With the global shortage of teachers where Uganda is not exceptional, we need to interrogate further whether we have the right teachers for our privately dominated ECD sub-sector. In order to harvest more successes by 2015, enough competent and qualified teachers must be recruited to kick start a new roadmap beginning 2016. The government must aim at retaining at least 50 per cent ownership of early childhood development centres and reduce the private sector dominance because it is purely profit-oriented and unsustainable.

In conclusion, government needs to do much in construction of early childhood development centres across the country, but most especially in hard-to-reach areas for hard-to-reach children. Comprehensively, the policy should be widely reviewed by involving all stakeholders.

Patrick Kaboyo is the Executive Director of Coalition of Uganda Private School Teachers Association.