Early Childhood Centres need to be better equipped – GNAT
Mr John Nyoagbe, the Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), has appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES) to equip early childhood development Centres with the state of the art learning resources.
He said those resources “will tickle the minds of learners and motivate them to learn through problem-solving and discovery”.
Mr Nyoagbe made the appeal at the close of a training workshop for 40 early childhood coordinators drawn from the 10 regions in Ho.
It was organized by the GNAT in partnership with the Danish Union for Youth and Early Childhood Educators (BUPL).
Mr Nyoagbe said though a vital segment of the education sector, early childhood education had not had the attention it should be having from governments and their donor partners.
“The early childhood education sub-sector is the most neglected and beset with numerous challenges and considered the responsibility of the community,” he said.
Mr Nyaogbe said many of the attendants at the early childhood centres were people of low qualifications with a good number of them being “Junior High School graduates who for want of a means of livelihood got drafted as attendants.”
He said GNAT had been uncomfortable with that situation and in 1995 succeeded in getting the support of BUPL and subsequently UNICEF, UNDP and GES to tackle early childhood education they way it should be.
“As professionals we in GNAT know that children should have a head start rather than a false start at early childhood development centres.”
Mr Nyaogbe said the early childhood centres should be places where children should be helped to develop skills related to behavior and interaction.
“In other words the confidence, peace, tolerance and other virtues we cherish in our communities can best be cultivated at our early childhood development centres”, he said.
He said the atmosphere at the early childhood development centres should be friendly and handled by well qualified and motivated professionals.
Mr Nyoagbe said blocks of six classroomss being built for basic schools should have been eight so that children in early childhood stages would have decent classrooms to learn in.
He urged the GES and Universities of Education to end the “turf war” over differences in their respective standard requirements which tended to frustrate graduates entering the GES.
Mr Gabriel Kploanyi, Volta Regional Director of Education, commended GNAT and BUPL for helping the GES and the government to strengthen early childhood education sub-sector.
Source: GNA