CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter focused on the review of related literature. The exercise was done following these sub- themes:
• The concept of Early Childhood Education.
• The contribution and effect of Government, Community and Private Sector to Early Childhood Education.
• The challenges facing the implementation of Early Childhood Education.
Education is increasingly attracting more attention all over the world as the bedrock of human capital development and knowledge economy and taking care of the child’s development right from birth is now recognized as the best option as a starter. Thus, the nature and intensity of care, nutrition and stimulation a child receives during this period determines to a large extent the level of physical, cognitive and psychosocial development a child can attain (UNICEF Nigeria, Undated). The learning process starts from the parents at home and then moves to the teachers in the school. Early Childhood Education (ECE), also called Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in China and Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) in Nigeria, refers to the education that children receive during the early stage of their childhood (REAP,2001). Early Childhood Education could also be a major input into a child’s formal education. The importance of Early Childhood Education includes development of mental functions of children in areas such as language, motor skills, psychosocial, cognitive and learning (Bowman, Donovan and Burns, 2001). Furthermore, Early Childhood Education develops in children school readiness, with positive economic and social impacts lasting well into adulthood from higher education attainment and less chance of involvement in criminal activities, to higher status employment and higher earnings (Schweinhart, 2007, Sparling, Ramey and Ramey, 2007).
2.1 The Concept of Early Childhood Education
In the National Policy on Education, the Federal Republic of Nigeria (2004), Early Childhood Education is labelled as Pre-primary Education and is defined as the education given in an educational institution to children aged three to five plus prior to their entering the primary school. Maduewesi (1999) refers to early childhood care and Education as the education offered to children who have not yet reached the statutory age of beginning primary school. He further maintained that it is a semi-formal education arrangement, usually outside home where by young children from about the age of 3 years are exposed through play like activities in a group setting through mental, social and physical learning suited to their developmental stages, until the mandatory age of government approved formal schooling. FRN (2004) refers to Early childhood care and Education (pre-primary education) as an education given in an educational institution to children aged 3-5 plus prior to their enrollment in the primary school.
The official provision made in the National Policy on Education (FGN 2004) mandated the Government to encourage private efforts in the provision of early childhood education in the country. More so, owing to the high demand for early childhood education by parents, it does not take a long time for newly established early childhood institutions to grow and develop. According to Nwakaego (2007), it is becoming customary to operate an early childhood institution in every household. currently, early childhood education institutions are located in various places and buildings-campuses of some universities and colleges, premises of some industrial and business organizations, church premises, residential buildings some part or the whole of which are hired for use as early childhood schools (Ejieh, 2006). The flip side of this proliferation of early childhood institutions is that, the issue of standard and “regulations†have been waved off. The end result is that the young minds are offered “substandard†and “irregular†education that cannot breed egalitarianism and self-reliant individuals of the society and leaders of tomorrow.
2.2 The Contribution and Effect of Government, Community and Private Sector on Early Childhood Education
2.2.1 The Contribution of the Government on Early Childhood Education
Government plays a vital in role in early childhood education in Nigeria. Nigeria, in accordance with the Jomtien Declaration on Education for All (EFA) in Thailand in 1990, signed up in order to provide quality and comprehensive early childhood education and care for all preschoolers. Nigeria had early childhood centres prior to this but it was left to the private sector, which either provided sub-standard services or charged very high fees, thereby making this educational provision inaccessible to every child. The Federal Government of Nigeria is now responsive to early childhood education by virtue of its inclusion in the Universal Basic Education (UBE) programmes and even moved a step further to inaugurating early childhood education policy on 8 October 2007 (Punch, 9 October 2007, p. 16). This constitutes a step in the right direction in the provision of good early childhood education. By this policy, every public primary school now has Early Childhood Education section.
The FRN (2004) outlined some steps the government designed to achieve the objectives of pre- primary education in Nigeria, which are as follows;
(i) Encourage private efforts in the provision of pre-primary education.
(ii) Making provision in Teacher Training Institution for production of specialist teacher in Pre- primary education.
(iii) Ensuring that the medium of instruction will be principally the mother-tongue or the language of the local community.
(a) Develop the orthography for many more Nigerian languages, and.
(b) Produce textbooks in Nigerian languages, FRN reported that some of these developments are already being pursued in the University Departments of linguistics under the auspices of some state ministries of Education. This Language centre will be expanded so as to have wide scope;
(iv) Ensure that the main method of teaching in the pre-primary institutions will be through play and that the curriculum of teacher training college is appropriately oriented to achieve this.
