Early Childhood Education (ECE) prepares children in readiness for primary school, and develop holistically, their physical, social, emotional, intellectual needs in order to build a broad and solid foundation for their wellbeing. To achieve this depends, firstly, on a strong Early Childhood Education (ECE) sub-system, built through quality Government structures and in partnership with strategic stakeholders, including parents and families, aimed at ensuring a collective ECE implementation and addressing children’s needs, especially the marginalized and most vulnerable including those with special educational needs.
Secondly, it hinges on ensuring that children are enrolled in KG at the right age (4 and five years) and exposed primarily to early stimulating experiences and nurturing care, and taught numeracy, literacy and problem-solving skills through play and games. This lays a solid foundation for life-long learning to enable them become responsible future citizens.
The Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) has established conducive enablers through the development of the ECE Policy Framework (with accompanying documents that guide the ECE Policy Implementation such as the Policy Directives, Costed Implementation Plan/Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, ECE Policy Guidelines), to build on the Education Act 2008, which supports the constitutional commitment to Free and Compulsory Universal Basic Education (fCUBE), which provides for two years of Kindergarten education amongst children aged four and five years.
The approach is to reinforce The Education 2030 agenda and to meet the ECE targets in Ghana’s National Education Strategic Plan 2018-2030, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 4.2.4:‘by 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.’ The best investments Ghana and any country can make to promote their own resource development, is by starting it right with her Kindergarten Children and ending it right.