The government has formed Inter-Governmental sector forum on Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE) in efforts to create a platform for dialogue between the two levels of government on matters of education.
The Devolution Principal Secretary (PS), Charles Sunkuli speaking during the Inter-Governmental sector forum on ECDE on Tuesday, said that the purpose of this forum was to obtain an understanding of the principle elements of the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) and its relevance in ECDE.
Sunkuli further explained that there was need to obtain an understanding of the challenges facing the implementation of ECDE by County Government and institute an inter-governmental process to develop and program interventions to address the challenges identified.
“What I expect as outcome of this meeting and the way forward, is an agreement on a series of follow up planning meetings to facilitate preparation of plans and necessary budget to support the implementation of Competence Based Curriculum at the ECDE level,” said Sunkuli.
At the same time, the PS said there will be a dialogue with the council of governors on issue of infrastructure on the ECDE buildings that need to be restructured to the required standard for conducive learning.
He noted that the Ministry of Devolution will provide support to devolved units to enable them to perform their functions and assess the performance of each of the counties so as to determine their actual requirements.
The PS further added that they will prepare a program of intervention and an actual plan on ECDE challenges to become subject of intervention in the next summit.
In her remarks, the Deputy Director Capacity Building and Technical Assistance to the Counties, Dr. Silvia Vundi said the obligation of the county governments in ECDE is to provide free and compulsory early childhood education as well as identify and undertake an assessment of children with special needs.
“We need the government to jointly develop ECDE intervention programs to ensure effective implementation of the CBC in the counties,” Vundi stated.
Meanwhile, the PS reiterated that Early Childhood Education is critical to the delivery of CBC hence there will be measures to address challenges hindering access to pre-primary education.
He said under the provision of Article 190 of the Constitution, the national government is obligated to provide requisite support for performance of the function and implementation of the policy.
By Joy Nzula/Soila Arasha
