There is a global Early Childhood Development (ECD) crisis, and over 250 million children under five – most of whom are located in rural communities in the global south- do not have access to adequate education and care leading to poor health, poor education, child marriage, lost life opportunities and poverty.
This crisis is caused and perpetuated by the systemic problems
1. Parenting practices
Many parents do not provide quality nurturing care and learning opportunities because they (wrongly) believe they don’t have adequate resources or skills and because they don’t realise how important the early years are.
2. Lack of quality formal pre-primary provision
In Uganda there is no state funded pre-primary and so currently only 37% of rural children have access to formal ECD. The Government of Ghana has made fantastic strides and have 2-years of compulsory state-funded Kindergarten. But unfortunately the quality of kindergarten is hampered by very large class sizes, lack of teacher training and inadequate play-resources.
3. Government Policy
The dominant ECD approach is to invest in a professional workforce & formal pre-primary provision. Whilst important, this approach does not offer a complete solution. It prioritises “schooling” over learning and does not cater for holistic development and wellbeing. This approach also requires significant infrastructure, personnel,
training and is slow and expensive to scale.