Section 4: Reflections on the Status of Implementation of the 2007 Policy and Opportunities for the Way Ahead

4.1 ECD Policy: What is Working and what is Not Working?

The survey and supporting research indicates that:

1. The private sector has responded to the call to set up ECD centres, which have been established in all but the most remote districts, even in deep rural areas.

However:

Although the private sector has established ECD centres, the overall coverage is poor, uneven and does not cater for pro-poor concerns. Furthermore, the quality of the service is often poor and may be causing more damage than good since research indicates poor quality early learning environments can actually hamper a child’s cognitive development. As a result, most children in Uganda under the age of 6 are still not accessing early childhood education and care in an institutional setting, and many of those that are accessing such, are not experiencing quality playbased education. For children under 3 years old parenting programmes may anyway be of more value, but for those who are aged 3 – 6 low access and quality is a real concern. Enrolling underage children in P1 of UPE primary schools continues as access to pre-primary remains relatively expensive and lack of access to local pre-schools is often a disincentive.

2. Most ECD Centres sampled reported that they had received visits from Government officials, in the form of inspection, in the past few months.

However:

There is no dedicated capacity and budget at the District and Sub-County levels for ECCE; there is a reliance on inspection grants to fund ECCE activities; and any capacity that does exist is overstretched and under-trained.

3. A registration system has been established and generally ECD centre owners are not against registering if the process was made more user friendly and it was not aligned to identification of institutions for tax purposes.

However:

The registration process and system appears punitive, lengthy and unfair. Such mechanisms encourage evasion and presentation of excuses to avoid compliance. Furthermore, there are currently limited and weak mechanisms for keeping track of registration and compliance data, and a lack of capacity for follow-up and feedback loops surrounding such data.

4. The present classification system for ECD education centres is in place and most ECD centres could place themselves in that system.

However:

When examined closely most ECD centres are just some variety of nursery school. The classification tends to divide and confuse practitioners and can be used as a way of avoiding registration and adherence to minimum standards. In turn, such confusion further undermines the (already limited) capacity of District and Sub-County officials to monitor and support existing Centres in the appropriate way.

5. There is some capacity to train ECD teachers and trainers.

However:

While training facilities and programmes exist for both ECD teachers and trainers they are of mixed or unknown/unmonitored quality and some are based on profit making by private colleges so are deemed expensive. Training programmes in private institutions are not quality assured by any external body so do not adhere to any minimum standards. While the public sector courses in teacher training colleges do adhere to certain standards, there is limited capacity for delivery and no culture of research and reflection, so the teaching and learning modalities are often oldfashioned and over academic.

6. There is a nascent hierarchy of qualifications in ECD teaching, with a certificate as the base qualification, advancing through diploma to degree and then higher degrees.

However:

While the hierarchy of qualifications exists, in fact there is little articulation of competency and no parity of esteem between levels, leaving candidates frustrated with qualifications which lead nowhere and a lack of portability between private and public institutions. There is also no mechanism in place to recognise proven prior experience (RPL) against a qualification and limited recognition also of vocational routes into ECCE. The prevalence of dead ends and closed pathways means that career planning is not often observed, and advancement is often not based on skills and experience.

7. There are some good examples of all five types of ECD education service providers in the ten districts sampled. These are generally offering at least an acceptable level of early childhood education and care to their children. A number of these are profiled in Report 2 in Attachments.

However:

Although there are some good examples of each of the types of service provision, most of the centres visited – of all types – failed to meet with the required minimum standards set by the MoES and, more important, would not be able to provide a good educational grounding for young children, or act as an effective route to school readiness.

8. The sampled ECD Centres charge a very wide range of user charges, which are adequate to maintain the services they provide, with a minority being subsidised by either international or national NGOs, or the state.

However:

The majority charge monthly amounts which are out of range for most poor people, and daily payments are even more expensive, even though it is the most financially insecure and the poorest who would generally have to resort to this means of payment. Furthermore, the majority of parents indicate that it is fees that hold them back from sending their children to ECD Centres, while further available research also supports this by showing that many parents are enrolling their children in Primary 1 classes underage to ensure they are in an educational setting, but a free one.

9. Most ECD Centres are run by people who have a proper regard for the safety of the children in their care.

However:

Teachers in a small minority of centres were observed mistreating children, including unacceptable forms of physical and psychological abuse. Such abuse would be prevented if proper inspections of these sites was undertaken by district officials trained in ECD provision.

10.There is increasing parental and community commitment and support of ECD and understanding of what it entails. This has begun to help ECD Centres tackle parents’ concerns that the medium of instruction in ECD Centres is the learners’ mother tongue.

However:

Low levels of parental engagement with their children’s ECD Centre was consistently mentioned as a challenge and parents are still observed moving their children from ECD Centres which teach in the mother tongue to private ones teaching in English.

11.There is some ECD centre networking already and a few associations which claim to represent the interests of those involved in ECE.

However:

These associations have very limited coverage and seem unknown outside the major urban centres. As part of professionalising ECD teaching as a legitimate career option, it is essential that teachers have representation at national and regional levels and can advance their interests in a collective manner. The present structure of stand-alone private centres does not encourage teachers associating with each other, but such associations are a key aspect of a profession and need to be developed. Teachers will need assistance in this regard. The MoES could foster this by insisting that there should be one body that it will deal with representing ECD teachers and then leave the teachers to form such a body or advance an existing association to expand and play that role. Once such a body is formed the MoES should meet with it regularly and use it to help shape the future of the sector and the profession.

4.2 What are the Opportunities?

The present system and infrastructure presents a number of opportunities for increasing enrolment and equitable coverage. As per the international/regional experience, policies should encourage an empowering, interdisciplinary and child-centred approach; the role of parents, families and other caregivers should be emphasised in interventions in order to support early child development; stakeholders must recognise that quality is essential and that poor quality ECD services will not deliver positive child outcomes; the sector should use and build upon existing entry points and delivery platforms; and the Government of Uganda should prioritise the most disadvantaged and hardest to reach to ensure equity and maximum value for investment.

So, the opportunities include:

• Build on existing parenting programmes for parents of the 0 – 3 year olds to reach all communities which require such support, particularly in rural areas. Where appropriate the LABE model of community supported home-based care and education should be adopted and mainstreamed.

• Build the capacity of existing ECD departments in the ECD qualification accrediting universities such that they can provide real support and quality assurance services and mechanisms to colleges which train ECD teachers and whose qualifications they accredit, and extend their reach to include private colleges which train ECD teachers. Also ensure that these universities can act as centres of research and thought leadership in the ECD field nationally. At the same time build the capacity of the vocational colleges such that they can offer more practice-based qualifications in ECD teaching which can be quality assured by DES and the TiET units of the MoES.

• Assist the existing CSOs and centres involved in ECD network more effectively and help them in developing an association of ECD education providers and of ECD teachers, to better represent the interests of these two groups at national level.

• Build on the present capacity in public primary schools and private centres to increase enrolment of 3 – 6 year olds. This must be done incrementally based on both public primary schools and private centres proving that they can provide a reasonable quality service, which does not harm the children in their care. Experience in other African countries of a single modality, particularly building all provision into Grade 0 in public primary schools, indicates that it is problematic unless adequate funding is made available for suitable infrastructure and learning materials, adequate numbers of trained teachers and quality is monitored closely. This solution generally advantages those attending better urban primary schools which tends to perpetuate the advantage of the already advantaged children.

• Use the pro-poor focus that the government has in ensuring that the children aged 3 – 6 in the most marginalised communities have access to pre-primary education in a way that works for them and their community. This will involve different modalities in different communities, with pastoralist communities being particularly sensitive to the appropriateness of the sort of ECD provision on offer. Where possible this should be multi-dimensional, able to offer food support, medical and hygiene assistance as well as education and care.

4.3 Priorities for the MoES

The research indicated there is a lack of government leadership in the ECE space. This is illustrated by the lack of targeting of the poor for access, lack of dedicated budget and specific role players at district level driving ECE, lack of accurate data and information flows, varied and unmonitored training and lack of clear career paths for ECE teachers, and provision through private providers who may put the profit motive before providing quality early education. Most immediate is the need for the MoES, with the partner government departments, to provide a clear vision of where early years education is going in the country, so building on the statements in the current ECD Policies and the Education Act. In addition, to help rectify the present situation the MoES could consider:

1. Putting in place a single, user-friendly ‘one stop shop’ approach to registration of ECD Centres with no dual system of licensing and then registering. The registration service should be free and should aim to prioritise the minimum standards that are relevant at different stages of a Centre’s maturity towards a gold standard reached within a set period. The requirements must not be overly onerous or expensive, albeit that they should ensure children’s needs are being met. This could also enable the MoES to introduce a conditional registration process (possibly for a fixed time) allowing unregistered ECD Centres to come in from the cold and register based on less rigorous criteria. Once these centres have come forward they will be on the database and can be supported and monitored.

2. Removing the current categorisation of ECD Centres which is both confusing and meaningless in practice. Focus instead on setting agreed sectoral minimum standards for children through an interactive process involving communities, schools, and centres which provide ECE services.

3. Surveying ECD education sites annually and adding the data to EMIS so that in future EMIS data collection processes include ECD centres. Also add categories to demographic and household surveys and any other national surveys that would enable a better oversight of early years education.

4. Establishing model ECD centres in each region as ‘champions’ of effective ECE delivery, and identify and promote model teacher training colleges offering ECD courses. Use both model ECD centres and colleges as an inspiration and guides for other centres and colleges.

5. Putting ECD teachers and caregivers on the government payroll and increase their salaries, along with strengthening their training to come into line with similar professions. This would need to be undertaken gradually and incrementally as it will have a long-term impact on the government wage bill.

6. Regulating and continuing to encourage private sector involvement in ECD education provision. The private sector will continue to play a key role, as any national, publicly-led alternative would be prohibitively expensive.

7. Motivating for the appointment of at minimum one dedicated ECD Focal Person (rather than Point Person) in every district. If possible, they should be managed by the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to deliver the full range of services required by the NIECD Policy. This person should have no other responsibilities beyond ECD leadership and oversight.

8. Putting in place a fast track process to get already-practicing ECD teachers and caregivers onto accredited qualification programmes. These should be vocational and have limited academic demands. They should be conducted across the country during weekends and school holidays and should be subsidised by government. They should enable a series of smaller, discrete training elements linked to credits that build up to a full qualification, so that trainees can adopt different paces in achieving certification.

9. Setting up a system of registering ECD teachers and incentivise them to register with a ‘golden handshake’ i.e. a one off cash payment.

10. Strengthening career pathways through colleges and universities, as well as examining options for vocational pathways and options for structured (properly assessed) recognition of prior learning and experience to be factored against qualification credits.

11. Assisting public primary schools to offer ECD places to children in their community as part of their service to the community, without user fees. A primary school should not be able to offer ECD classes until it has met the same standards as private ECD centres, with a focus on the quality of delivery, the staff and learning materials, rather than excessive focus on the infrastructure, which should be adequate but does not need to be ‘first-world’ at this stage.

12. Providing all registered ECD centres with a package of policy and guideline documents, good practice CD/DVD, some guidelines on local materials, and some equipment e.g. for playgrounds and play to address the shortage of materials found in ECD Centres, as according to the survey.

13. In addition, motivating for the appointment and training of at least one dedicated ECE Inspector in every district. These could be managed by the Ministry of Education and Sports but should liaise very closely with the ECD Focal Person in ensuring overall quality of ECD services in their districts. One of their key roles would need to be the oversight of registration and compliance processes, as well as ensuring feedback loops between data and information gathering, and support and training provision.

14. Putting in place incentives and subsidies for providers who can prove that they are targeting and catering in a real sense for the poorest members of their community. Also bolstering PPP policies to encourage growth of the sector overall.

15. Simplify the Learning Framework for 3 – 6 year olds and translate it into main national languages. Publish a user-friendly Learning Framework for 0 – 3 year olds. Distribute both documents widely and support their use with adequate and targeted training.

16. Encouraging communities and CSOs to provide parenting programmes and foster the LABE model of home-based provision for 0-3 year olds, rather than encouraging institutional based provision. Support this with stronger advocacy of the benefits of ECD and use of the mother tongue in ECD classes. The advocacy campaign should target fathers as well as mothers.

17. Encouraging parents, communities and local officials to participate in forms of monitoring and evaluation that enable better oversight and information feedback loops into the Centre e.g. through the creation of guidelines for participatory M&E, provision of funding to ECD Focal Persons to conduct outreach and host training platforms, and encouragement of (existing and new) NGO initiatives in training and community mobilisation.