Childhood development

Uganda: Govt urged to invest more in Early Childhood Development

Noticias

Africa/ Uganda/ 11.12.2018/By: Lawrence Mulondo/ Source: www.newvision.co.ug.

Among the other sectors Save the children is championing in is Health and Nutrition, Child poverty, Child protection, Childs rights and governance.

Save the Children has urged the Ministry of Education to invest more in Early Childhood Development (ECD) in order to have quality children joining primary schools.

In an education Act of 2008, the government recognized pre-primary education as the first stage of education for all children below the age of eight.

The ECD education sector policy by the Ministry of Gender Labor and Social Development recognises four programs including day care Centres, Nursery schools, home care Centres and community Centres.

While attending the first day of the three day Save the Children partnership meeting at Royal Suits Bugolobi, partners agreed that a child that joins primary with an ECD background, has basic knowledge on literacy, giving them a good start.

Save the Children Head of Advocacy and Communications, Alun McDonald said children that attend ECDs have better social skills compared to those who did not attend.

“We recognize that ECD is critical in every child’s life as it determines the kind of adult they will be in future,” he said.

He pointed out that if children do not go through ECD, they find it difficult to learn skills in primary school.

McDonald said Uganda has made a lot of improvement in primary education due to the existence of Universal Primary Education (UPE).

He however said that the country is still weak in terms of ECD due to lack of enough public ECD Centres.

“Uganda has good policies on ECD, however they are not well implemented around the country especially in villages,” he said.

Statistics on ECD

According to Save the Children, only 13.4% of children in Uganda are enrolled in ECD/pre-primary.

Families with the highest income, 53% of children attend ECD, 21.6% of children from middle income families, and only 6.7% of children from the poorest families attend.

Save the Children says, there is also a big difference between urban and rural areas in terms of access to ECD as 53% of children in urban areas attend ECD, but only 19.5% in rural areas.

According to the 2017 UNICEF report 65 of the children between the age of 3 and 5 are developmentally on track in literacy, numerous and physical, social and emotional development.

According to the 2011 Ministry of Education statistics, ECD Centres  distribution per region is as follows, Central region 783(33%), Eastern 554 (24%), North East106 (5%), North 354 (15%), South West 128 (5%), and West 436 (19%).

McDonald called on the government to sensitize the public more on the importance of ECD and also put in place a special budget for the construction of free ECD Centres in UPE schools.

The 2016 National ECD policy of Uganda has it that 80% of the ECD centers around the country are privately owned and financially out of reach from most Ugandans, adding that a few children benefit from institutionalized ECD centers leaving many toddlers to stay home with their parents of which many parents have are not experienced to offer ECD programs to their children.

While meeting a delegation from Canada on ECDs in January, the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. John Chrysostom Muyingo said: “Government realised that ECDs are very critical to the children’s education.

A review is being conducted by Curriculum Development Centre to provide an assessment that will fit with the demands of our educational market.”

Muyingo added that ECDs are the essential areas for child upbringing that introduce a child to learning new things in life.

He noted that it is at this stage that learners are introduced to writing, listening and also learning how to play with friends.

“In the past, the government was concentrated on funding primary education and Early Childhood Education (ECE) was left to the private sector and non-governmental organisations.

Save the Children involvement in ECD

Save the Children is currently constructing primary schools around the country that have an ECD complement. Last year, the NGO worked in 91 ECD Centres across Uganda.

McDonald revealed that as Save the Children commemorates 100 years in 2019, the country Directors will focus more on improving ECD in the countries where they are serving.

He said among the things they will be fostering is training ECD care givers and other necessities needed.

Partnerships

To implement their goals in the country, Save the Children works with partners Like New Vision in the Education sector and others.

Among the other sectors Save the children is championing in is Health and Nutrition, Child poverty, Child protection, Childs rights and governance.

Save the Children is partnering with New Vision to extend newspapers to children in different schools around the country like Karamoja, Nakasongola Nakaseke and others through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) project.

The move is to inform children of what is going on in the country and the whole world as well as improve on their reading skills.

Challenges

McDonald said that limited funding is always a challenge to them as they extend services to children. He said their areas of operation are usually over whelming.

He added that the fact that Uganda is hosting a number of Refugees from different countries strains services offered by the organization in the areas where they are.

He however said the existence of refugees is also an opportunity as they contribute to the economy of the country.

Meeting objectives

Save the children partnership coordinator, Janet Nambuya said that they called for a meeting with their partners to share experiences and also to share areas where there is need for improvement.

Nabafu added that they called on partners to create a platform for reflection, learning, accountability and networking.

She added that in the meeting they are to disseminate the country strategic plan of 2019-2019.

Source of the notice: https://www.newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1491038/govt-urged-invest-childhood-development

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Embracing tech in early childhood education

Noticias

Asia/Vietnam/25.09.18/Source: vietnamnews.vn.

Learning is fun: Kids at the Lùng Vai Kindergarten in northern mountainous Lào Cai Province during playtime. Experts advocate initiatives to draw resources from both the public and private sectors to promote equity in education and ensure access to learning opportunities for all children, regardless of their age, gender, residence, ethnicity, social status. VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Hà

When Minh Hạnh’s five-year-old daughter Mai told her she had a class presentation about her favourite pets later that week, Hạnh knew just what to do.

She gathered all the photos and videos she had of little Mai with the animals her great grandparents have in Hải Phòng City, 100km from Hà Nội. There were photos of a cow, a dog and a mother pig with her herd of adorable newborns. After making them into a short clip, she used Google Photos to share it with Mai’s teacher.

She asked the teacher to help screen the clip for the class when it was her daughter’s turn to present.

When Mai came home from the presentation, she said all her friends liked it so much that they gave the clip a big round of applause.

“Some of my friends say they have never seen a real cow before,” the little one said happily.

Hạnh used to think that screen time was not healthy for children, as it can easily replace face-to-face socialising. She still holds that belief, but her views have evolved.

“I think modern technology has its advantages here – helping children to better understand what they’re learning,” Hạnh said.

“We are no longer living in a world where it’s practical to prohibit or avoid ‘screen time,’” she said. “Digital technology is certainly here to stay, and most of our children are using a smart phone as soon as they’re old enough to hold one. We can help our children by using technology in a productive way rather than fighting against it altogether.”

Lê Anh Lan, an education officer for UNICEF Vietnam, agrees.

“It is now common to apply technology in every field of life, including early childhood education,” she said. “The period from zero to eight years old is a critical phase in childhood development; a child at this age learns an incredible number of skills and retains a lot of information he or she will need to function throughout life.”

While no official statistics are available on the use of technology in preschools in Việt Nam, Trịnh Thị Xim, head of the Early Childhood Education Faculty at the Hà Nội National College for Pedagogy, said new technologies have been implemented in many cities and provinces across the country.

“We’ve seen the benefits technology brings about for the children – they’re more involved in class activities and more interested in discovering things around them when photographs or animations are presented. Visual aids help them remember better than traditional methods,” Xim said. “With thoughtful guidance, teachers can use classroom technology to help early childhood students learn age-appropriate skills.”

Xim said that while screen time used to have a bad reputation for detracting from social interaction, educators are changing that perception by embracing it as a tool.

“For instance, little kids often find it easier and more exciting to use a touchscreen rather than a mouse or a keyboard. Using tablets allows them to physically interact with the content they’re learning,” she said. Xim added that practising the use of digital tools will serve students well for years to come.

John Jeon Huh is CEO of the Jello Academy in Hà Nội, one of the schools implementing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) and arts educational approach that is popular in the United States. Huh claimed the application of technology in early education has led to remarkable results.

“The integration of technology into STEM classes has created useful new experiences for young children, enabling them to have fun while discovering and testing the theories they are taught,” he said.

“Parents nowadays actually care more about our approach,” he said. “They welcome the addition of technology and STEM activities into the curriculum.”

The role of technology in early childhood education has long been recognised elsewhere in the world: the UK government sees in computers the potential to improve educational standards, and they have invested accordingly. The 2009 Home Access scheme was designed to promote the educational benefits of home computer and internet access. The Digital Britain report, produced by two UK government departments in 2009, stated that “we need a change in approach in education and training for digital life skills, starting with the youngest students.”

The No Child Left Behind legislation, introduced by the United States government in 2002, shared similar aims. One of its sections, titled “Enhancing Education Through Technology,” was designed to improve student attainment through technology. It also aimed to ensure that every student is technologically literate by the end of eighth grade.

Necessary support

Although researchers do not deny the potential benefits of technology for accelerating language and literacy development in young children, they have said that these gains are reliant on the way specific technologies are applied at home and in the classroom.

Lê Anh Lan said technology in early childhood education and early learning only proves to be effective with good preparation for teachers, parents and child care givers.

“Whether a child can benefit from technology depends largely on how it is applied by educators and adults,” she said.

Trịnh Thị Xim shared this opinion.

“Simply investing in technology or offering training in the use of new equipment will not be enough to achieve the sought-after changes; the education sector should support teachers so they can be confident enough to help students,” she said.

In order to do this, Xim believes policy makers will need to be involved.

“Training for teachers, investment in facilities for schools and the determination for change among education sector officials are critical,” she said.

John Jeon Huh said that a coordinated system is needed to ensure a lifelong foundation for young children.

“We need an educational system in which technology is applied consistently from the lowest level to the highest level – technology application in early childhood is just the first step on a lifelong path,” he said.

Despite great effort from the Government in investing in early childhood education, lots of constraints remain including limited investment for technology, Anh Lan from UNICEF Việt Nam said the state could play a stronger role.

“I also advocate for initiatives that draw resources from both the public and private sectors to promote equity in education and ensure access to learning opportunities for all children, regardless of their age, gender, residence, ethnicity, social status and their perceived capabilities, including informal learning.” VNS

Technology connects parents and teachers

The KidsOnline app was initially designed by a Vietnamese group to keep parents of young children updated on classroom activities. Over the last two years, KidsOnline has become the most popular cloud-based platform for kindergartens in Viet Nam to communicate with parents. It has almost 83,000 users.

The app, available on iOS and Android, allows parents to communicate directly with teachers. It shows what the kids are doing in real time, allowing interested parents to monitor their child’s daily learning progress. Photos of school activities are uploaded by teachers and sent to each parent’s app. It also provides information on upcoming school activities that parents may want to participate in.

Later on, the app evolved to help school managers with administrative tasks. These include managing school finances, healthcare and recruitment. Teachers can also use KidsOnline to receive notes from parents and send feedback instead of communicating with parents solely through paper-based reports, email or face-to-face interaction.

“Of course in-person contact would still be the preference of every parent when it comes to talking with their child’s teacher, and we never hope to replace such an important communication channel,” said Lê Huy Long, CEO of KidsOnline. “We hope to supplement this by providing regularly updated information on how children are doing at school, and keeping a record of all relevant activities.”

Source of the notice: https://vietnamnews.vn/society/education/465157/embracing-tech-in-early-childhood-education.html#jRmjP2PyGcI0jlJ8.97

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