Kenya

This is a wonderful article by the Public Relations Officer at Kenyatta University. It's so close to home.

Early Childhood Development Education Holds Hope for Future
Pharmacy student speaks on his experiences

By KEN RAMAN

Quality Early Childhood Development (ECD) education and care could be holding the key to reduced crime rate. It could also be a low-cost but remedy that could lower the risks of mental disorders among women.

This is according to recent studies by the World Bank that formed the basis of discussion at a recent Third African International Conference on ECD held in Accra, Ghana. Research has indicated that boys reared in broken families exhibit anti-social behaviour when they enter the school system and about one-third of them become delinquent in their teenage years.

Findings also show that females that did not receive a sound education and care during their infancy show an increased risk of mental health problems such as depression in their adult life. Research done in Sweden indicates that children who attend good ECD centres, which involved parents, had the best social skills and cognitive skills at the age of 13.

It was also noted that male children entering the school system with poor verbal skills tended to be functionally illiterate as teenagers and a significant number of them ended up in the justice system. It was noted that a teacher’s positive behaviour such as attentiveness, encouragement, engagement, sensitivity to children, and responsiveness to their changing needs do enhance their learning outcomes.

However, a teacher’s negative behaviour such as harshness and detachment do affect children’s learning environment. Research findings indicated that a teacher’s level of formal education and training are positive attributes that enriches a child’s learning.

Governments were encouraged to put in place policies for adequate staff compensation – wages that allows staff to be comfortable in their jobs and not worry about better-paying opportunities elsewhere. It was argued that the high turnover of teachers from ECD centres across Africa was negatively affecting children under their care. Research has proved that continuity of teaching staff as opposed to regular changes do not disrupt children’s learning.

Studies have also shown that when children are enrolled in high quality ECD classrooms, they exhibit fewer or less serious problems, enjoy better social adjustment, including less socially deviant behaviour. They also tend to comply more with, and are less resistant to, adult requests, are more cooperative, responsive, innovative and more securely attached to their teachers.
In India, it was discovered that performance in mathematics is higher when children entered the school system with a good ECD unlike those that never had a good start in life.

This could explain the performance of mathematics in Kenya at both the primary and secondary level where the national average is bellow 40 per cent.

The classroom structure should include the physical environment, that must be carefully arranged to assure the safety of children, with electrical outlets covered, cleaning supplies locked up out of reach of children and facilities for adults to wash after diapering or toileting.

The Accra conference organised by the Association of the Development of Education in Africa (Adea) discussed the what and why of development problems of the African child and also the way forward for their quality development. Speakers argued that children are the touchstone of a healthy and sustainable society, and that how a culture or society treats its youngest members has a significant influence on how it will prosper and be viewed by others.

The World Bank says research had shown that an investment in the health and development of children will also return meticulous dividends in subsequent years.

The dividends include decreased need for special education, custodial care, welfare support and incarceration for delinquent behaviour.

The convention further declares that States are morally and legally obliged to fulfill these rights. Kenya is among the few Africa countries that have domesticated this convention following the adoption of the Children Act 2001. Participants were told that children in sub-Saharan Africa face the greatest challenges to healthy child development of any region in the world.

Presenters who included university scholars and researchers from 38 sub-Saharan African countries argued that extreme childhood poverty can have irreversible effects on the young child, including poor nutrition and health, poor or missed education, poor early child-care and social protection and low aspirations.

Experts took issue with the way HIV/Aids campaigns have been carried out in the past two decades. A former Kenyatta University lecturer Peter Mwaura, said: “The focus has by and large been on adults and there has been a relatively low and slow response to the thousands of children affected or orphaned through HIV/ Aids.”

He argued that interest groups and government agencies should ensure access to quality basic services for all children. “First let us see the struggle by the sick parents not only in meeting their own but also the children’s nutritional, health and psychosocial needs. This challenge is being met under severe conditions of poverty, ill health and stress. Let us set our own inner eyes on the struggle by the child to take care of him or her self and possibly to take care of sick parents and other siblings. These children suffer severe psychological distress and stigma. The orphaned children are mostly left in the hands of members of the extended family or put in orphanages where they sometimes suffer from discrimination and other sorts of child abuse.”

Other children in difficult circumstances include those in refugee camps, children of prisoners who have been neglected and are suffering in jails alongside their mothers.

There are also the children with disabilities who have equal rights but most of them fail to have their rights and needs provided because of the parent’s and community’s attitude towards them.

The writer is the Public Relations Officer at Kenyatta University