The Effect Of Government, Community And Private Sector On Early Childhood Education
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, KWARA STATE]

3. Early Childhood Curriculum: Curriculum is what and how of any educational enterprise. It is the vehicle through which any educational programmes can be successfully implemented. The ECE curriculum is an important written plan that includes goals for children’s development and learning, experiences through which they will achieve the goals, what staff and parents do to help children achieve the goals and, the materials needed to support the implementation of the curriculum (National Centre on Quality Teaching and Learning (NCQTL), 2012). The early childhood curriculum helps to ensure that staff or teachers cover important learning areas, adopt a common pedagogical approach and reach for a certain level of quality across age groups. These descriptions about ECE curriculum indicates that it is an indispensable material in the business of implementing ECE programme. Its indispensability spurred the government of Nigeria to see to the development and production of National Early Childhood Curriculum for Ages 0-5years by NERDC, with the support of UNICEF. This curriculum was launched in 2007. The unfortunate thing however is that this curriculum, since it was launched, is not found in almost all pre-primary schools in Nigeria. This is particularly true of privately owned schools. The non-availability of the National Early Childhood Curriculum for Ages 0-5years in pre-primary schools has been confirmed in findings of researches conducted in different states in Nigeria (e.g Viatonu, 2011; Amali, 2012; Okewole, 2013).
4. Professional Development: The teacher holds the key to successful implementation of any educational enterprise. This is why the federal government of Nigeria stated in NPE (2013) that no education system may rise above the quality of its teachers (Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN), 2013). Jibril (2007) has submitted that whatever input is made into an educational system in respect of management, resources, facilities and array of instructional materials, will be of little avail if the teacher is unskilled, poorly trained or even ignorant. This is to say that whatever intervention the federal government of Nigeria makes to improve ECE will be of little effect if pre-primary school teachers are not given constant professional development. The professional development training is particularly needed as the almost all the teachers in the ECE at the pre-primary school level are either not trained or trained in other fields not relevant to ECE. Goble and Horm (2010) have submitted that whatever a person’s profession is, the need for professional development is universal because professionals need to continually enrich their knowledge and increase their sense of professionalism over the course of their careers so as to implement current research based practice. According to Goble and Horm (2010), early childhood professional development brings to the forefront the significance of the early years for children’s learning and development and highlights the central role early childhood educator play in children’s successful outcomes. Unfortunately, the pre-primary school teachers in Nigeria in both public and private school seldom receive professional development training. In fact, some researchers have confirmed that the teachers lack professional development training (Olaleye & Omotayo, 2009; Viatonu, 2011). This lack of professional training for the teachers is liable to worsen the problems of implementing ECE in Nigeria. This is because almost all the teachers in Nigerian pre-primary schools are not professionally qualified.
6. Supervision: To ensure effective implementation of any educational enterprise, supervision must be given adequate attention. In regards to ECE, Awino (2014) noted that it is important to supervise in order to gather information from children, caregivers, parents, communities, and general ECE environment. Supervision of ECE can be used to correct errors, modify practices where necessary and motivate as well as encourage all involved in its implementation (Awino, 2014). Usually, the changes that result from supervision of ECE programme can strengthen the implementation of such ECE programme. Supervision in ECE leads to the holistic development of children enables efficient implementation of curriculum, checks whether the objectives of the programmes have been achieved, promotes maintenance of basic standards, identifies problems and constraints, motivates, enriches and promote personal as well as professional growth of all those involved (Awino, 2014). Despite the immense benefits that supervision has to offer the ECE, the Nigerian ECE at pre-primary school level is not provided with these benefits as it is usually left unsupervised. This cannot allow effective implementation of ECE programmes at pre-primary school level in Nigeria. Researchers have consistently lamented this lack of supervision in ECE (e.g., Osakwe, 2011; Nakpodia, 2011; Sooter, 2013).