3.8 Quality assurance in the ECDE sector

BOX 3.8

Quality assurance in the ECDE sector

The national preprimary education policy mandates that the Ministry of Education collaborate with county governments in providing quality assurance to enforce standards. The quality standards relate to curriculum and pedagogy, learning materials, physical facilities, health and nutrition, quality of teachers, role of stakeholders, children’s rights, inclusivity, safety, and protection.

For quality assurance, the standard guidelines provide assessment tools and procedures to support the process. The policy mandates that quality assurance officers assess physical facilities in all preprimary schools, supervise teachers and learning, and document and disseminate their findings to stakeholders to improve the quality of services provided to all children, including those with disabilities. The officers are also expected to follow up on the quality assurance reports and ensure effective implementation of curricula for learners and teachers.

Though quality assurance is a critical component in improving educational outcomes, the Making Devolution Work for Service Delivery study revealed that county governments have given it little attention. County governments have recruited field officers and assigned them responsibilities to ensure that all Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) services adhere to the established quality standards. However, focus group discussions with field officers in the counties visited revealed weak quality assurance structures at the subcounty level. For example, while County A assigned an ECDE field officer to more than 200 ECDE centers spread across two subcounties, County B had assigned only one officer per subcounty, with some subcounties having as many as 98 ECDE centers.

The study also revealed that the officers’ ability to undertake quality assurance was further strained by their assignment to other administrative duties. This lack of facilitation was mentioned as a major challenge in the monitoring and supervision of ECDE centers, especially in rural and hardest-to-reach areas, thus limiting most quality assurance visits to urban centers and centers located closer to their offices. In County C, the study revealed significant duplication of efforts, with ECDE, social protection, and quality assurance officers assigned almost identical roles without clarity in their terms of reference.

Finally, the capacity of field officers to carry out the quality assurance mandate was also cited as a challenge. The subcounty coordinators interviewed indicated that though they are aware of the ECDE assessment and monitoring tools, they have not sensitized the center managers and head teachers to them, thus affecting center-based supervision.

Source: World Bank 2020a.

Weaknesses in county management of service delivery have several likely explanations:

• Starting from scratch. County governments (themselves created in 2013) have had to establish entirely new sector departments. In some cases (for example, health), this has been facilitated by the preexistence of deconcentrated service delivery units and facilities that could be adapted to new county requirements. In other sectors (for example, rural water supply), counties inherited little and have had to start from scratch—inevitably taking time to set up sector management structures that can take on all necessary activities. In the urban sector, the dissolution of municipal governments left counties with an institutional vacuum, resulting in an initial deterioration in urban service delivery that is only gradually being filled. • Building capacity. Under devolution, county sector departments have taken on “meso-level” or middle management functions (such as information management, quality assurance, or procurement) that were previously the prerogative of national MDAs and for which staffing and systems have been