CHILDREN UPCOUNTRY NEED BETTER FOUNDATION EDUCATION

Lorunget ECD Center in Lopei Sub County of Napak district

With reference to the opinion article “toddlers also deserve free education”, New Vision Wednesday 20th June, I wish to supplement on why the plan by the education ministry to promulgate the Early Childhood Development (ECD) policy in Uganda is a crucial idea especially for districts in the periphery. My opinion is based on the current education and child welfare situation in the Karamoja sub region.

A recent media report also confirms that the distribution of kindergartens in Uganda is dependent on the levels of income of the people. For instance as reported; central region has the largest share of the children’s learning centres, taking up to 39%. Eastern region follows with 22%, western Uganda takes 15% and 11% goes for the northern part of the country. The south western region comes fifth with a 10% share, but as usual north eastern region or Karamoja trails with a crushing 3% share.

I totally agree with this media revelation. It insinuates that the existing nursery school systems in Uganda are largely geared towards profit making, rather than fulfilling the universal education dream. Thus, 100% of all registered nurseries are mainly owned by business individuals in the ‘greener regions’. The system favours mostly children of rich people in better off places. In my view, the only way kids in disadvantaged locations like Karamoja can catch up with their friends who study in town is by having government come in to fully support the program like other education systems in the country. Here is how and why:

Having a nationwide capacity building for the human resources involved in upbringing of children in these elementary learning centres. One of the reasons ECD centres are not doing well in the village settings is the poor knowledge of the children’s care givers.

For instance Brac Uganda with funding from UNICEF set up 10 ECD centres for the Tepeth community atop mount Moroto last year, but all the care givers in these centres do not know how to read and write and or even count from one to ten in English -the official language. How then can this type of teachers prepare children to join primary one? The ministry could actually create more jobs recruiting and training p.7 graduates to take up such positions.

The facilitation of teachers of these toddlers also needs to be specified. Currently, most nursery school teachers in Karamoja are either baited with very little money, food staff from supporting NGOs or not paid at all.

The most highly paid ECD centre staffs in Karamoja are those serving in the Brac established centres. Brac pays ECD teachers a salary of Sh 50,000/= per month. A centre like Lorunget ECD in kailikong village Lopei Sub County of Napak district is set up by the community and does not have anything to give teachers. Surprisingly this centre has a huge number of children with no clear care giver in charge. School drop outs who work at their will are the ones conducting lessons in this school. These ‘teachers’ go to teach just because they want to remember what they learnt while at school, otherwise they have no single motivating factor taking them to the children learning centre.

The other aspect that needs support for children’s education centres in rural areas is fitting of playing equipments. I have seen in the ECDs of Karamoja teachers start off with kids on the black boards and books. I thought the idea behind ECD is -build the brain of a child by engaging him mostly with games and in the game some aspects of counting and picture identifications is brought up bit by bit as the child grows so that when taken to P.1 he already has where to begin from and proceed.

It would be fair for the education ministry to give support to village based kindergartens by procuring game materials for them so as to put kids here at some level closer to those who study in towns.

The hope for success of toddlers’ education among people living in disadvantaged regions like Karamoja is given by the positive attitude already built towards the value of going to school. This is manifested in the crowded classrooms in most village learning centres in Karamoja. It shows that parents are ready and willing to take children to school and kids too are ready to learn.

Karamoja though continues to suffer limited number of schools, poor facilitation of instructors and logistical challenges. The real gap that needs to be filled remains with the education Ministry. Government needs to strengthen facilitation of foundation education for children especially locked up in the up-country areas. Like UPE, USE and the free health service delivery that the country has adopted, toddlers’ learning is yet another area that needs immediate intervention.