Play has become a powerful ‘tool’ that attracts a huge number of children to the Early Child Education (ECE) centre in Ali Fodio Primary School, Bodinga, Sokoto State, FELIX KHANOBA writes.
Early, on every school day, children in many communities not far from Ali Fodio Primary School, Bodinga, hardly let go of their new found habit of trooping out in large numbers to the only ECE centre in the school.
The children, whose ages range from three to six years, have become the envy of their senior ones in the school, who sometimes abandon their classroom to watch them engage in scintillating play with the only teacher in the centre.
“Playing is so powerful, as they play, they learn,” a parent, Bashir Bala Bodinga, who was waiting to pick his children from the school after the day’s activities, said.
” My son now looks up to an exciting day in school because of the plays they engage in and any day we tell him not to go school because of illness or other issue, he will cry and cry.”
Bashir, who made this known during a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) facilitated visit to Ali Fodio Primary School as parts of media dialogue on ECE that took place in Sokoto, said his four-year-old Ashiru, is now more responsive and interacts better after only about two months at the centre.
“I realise that the way he interacts with the mother and all other people in the house has improved , before Ashiru did not know how to read his alphabets and he didn’t even know how to write numbers 1-10 but now, step by step he now counts from 1 to 100.
Bashir revealed that most people in the area are now embracing the importance of early education in child’s life in a region that had been ‘prominent’ in contributing massively to Nigeria’s embarrassing number of out-of-school children.
Binta Musa-the teacher/caregiver in the ECE centre, corroborated Bashir’s view on the growing popularity of the pre-school learning system, saying the centre has witnessed a major boom in recent times.
According to Binta, who happens to be the only teacher at the ECE centre, the class population was only 40 in 2020 but has now grown to 150 pupils.
She said the new passion for ECE is not unconnected to advocacy and the various play methods deployed in engaging children, thereby attracting their peers who would have probably preferred street’s play.
According to the teacher, various play methods are used in teaching the children including, singing, hide and seek game, drawing, among others.
“They also learn by these drawings (on the classroom wall). Some also play among themselves with what they have been taught and by doing so, they learn better,” she said.
During the visit, it was however, brought to the fore that Ali Fodio Primary School was one of the few schools to play host to ECE centre in Bodinga Local Government Area, which had a population of 175,406 as of 2006 (census figures)).
Head teacher of the school, Abubakar Bala, said it was a big source of joy in the community that the ECE established about six years ago has surpassed expectations not only in enrollment but the impact on little children.
He, however, identified problems of poor learning facilities and lack of adequate teachers as major impediments.
Education Secretary, Bodinga Local Government Area – Lawali Na’Akka Muazu, admitted the challenges, saying the problems have slowed down ECE momentum in the area amid increasing demand,
He said the area boasts of 105 basic schools but has only managed to put up 27 ECE centres , a problem blamed on inadequate classrooms.
“We have 105 basic schools in the (Bodinga) LGA and 27 primary schools have ECE centres. Some of the primary schools don’t have ECE centres because of inadequate number of classrooms.
” They are small kids, so you cannot put them outside or under the shade. It is when they (many of them) reach the age of six that we enrol them to basic level one,” he said.
Muazu credited the rising likeness for early childhood education on on shift in policy and support by international bodies like UNICEF, adding that many now know that early childhood education matters in terms of its long term impacts on life trajectories as well as its capacity to transform education sector by getting it right from the foundation.
Based on available national statistics, only 36 per cent of children within the ECE age bracket are lucky to be enrolled in early childhood education. The data does not capture the recent surge in Nigeria’s population.
But speaking at the media dialogue on ECE in Sokoto, UNICEF education specialist, Yetunde Oluwatosin, said Nigeria needs to up its game in getting more children to the centres.
“In Nigeria, only one in three children (36 per cent) attend, but at least 10 million children are not enrolled,” she said,
” It has been observed that a large inequalities persist between the poorest children and the richest children’s ECE attendance rate, translating to 8 per cent and 87 per cent, respectively.
“Globally, fewer than one in three children ages three to four attend ECE.
“In West and Central Africa, only one in four (24 per cent) attend ECE,” Oluwatosin added.
The UNICEF education specialist said one of the major challenges facing early childhood education include poor number of teachers.
“If you look at it, from the 2018 National Personnel Audit (NPA) of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), we have over seven million learners but 154,000 teachers.
“This pupils/teachers ratio is low, and we must do something to improve this. This disparity is there, and we are still far behind in achieving the SDG goals,” she said.
UNICEF Communication Specialist, Geoffrey Njoku, who also spoke at the media dialogue, said there is need for more government investments in the pre-school sector as it provides massive opportunity for children to learn fast through play.
According to him, play is the language of children and it is where they are the expert, adding that with it they are able to have a lot of fun and also develop the critical executive functioning skills that determine life outcomes.
