CHALLENGES FACING THE DEVOLUTION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION PROGRAMMES IN KENYA: A STUDY OF NANDI COUNTY PUBLIC ECDE CENTERS

Abstract

Devolution gave the county governments mandate to implement education programs such as pre-primary education, childcare facilities and home craft centers. However, these have not been fully achieved. Therefore, this study focused to examine the challenges facing devolution of Early Childhood education programs in Nandi County, Kenya. The specific objectives were to assess the status of teacher adequacy, establish the kind of support accorded to ECDE teachers by Ministry of Education, find out the extent to which devolution has enhanced infrastructure development, establish the extent of availability of instructional materials and identify the strategies put in place by the county government to motivate teachers in order to improve service delivery in public ECDE centers. The study was guided by the Systems Theory. It adopted the descriptive survey design using the mixed methodology and the pragmatism paradigm. The target population comprised of 1387 pre-school teachers, 1 county Director of ECDE, 6 sub-county ECDE officers and 552 primary school head teachers. A sample size of 301 teachers and 226 head teachers was obtained. Stratified and simple random sampling was used to select teachers and head teachers while purposive sampling was used in selecting the county director of ECDE and 6 Sub-County ECDE Directors. Questionnaire and interview schedules were used for collecting data for the study. Validity and reliability of the instruments were determined before data collection. Quantitative data was analyzed using frequencies and percentages while content analysis was used to analyze qualitative information. The study found out that majority of the pre-schools in the study area lacked adequate pre-school teachers, textbooks and play materials. Majority of the employed pre-school teachers had undergone pre-school teacher training courses therefore they had adequate and current pedagogical skills which allowed them to effectively handle pre-school learners. Most of the pre-schools lacked adequate teaching and learning materials. Parents provided learning materials and feeding programmer for ECDE learners. Pre-schools had inadequate infrastructure since the county government have constructed 30% of classrooms in the study area. The study therefore recommended that there is need for county government, parents and other education stakeholders to provide instructional materials and construct more classrooms for efficient and improved service delivery in all the pre-schools in the study area. Further, it was recommended that there is need for employment of more trained pre-school teachers by the county government to improve learning. This is attributed to the fact that there were inadequate pre-school teachers employed by the county government yet early childhood education is a devolved function.