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KAMPALA – The Cabinet on Monday passed the early childhood care and education policy that recognises the need to strengthen coordination among all stakeholders to supports children’s early development.
This was revealed by Betty Amongi Akena, the Minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development during a High-Level Policy Dialogue on Childcare as a Fundamental for Human Capital Development on Wednesday.
Organised by the Ministry of Gender in partnership with Ace Policy Research Institute (APRI) and Early Years Count Uganda (EYC), the dialogue intended at initiating a conversation on the importance of quality childcare, identify gaps, share best practices, and discuss policy recommendations to provide a strategic direction for childcare policy implementation and service delivery.
It was a common idea that childcare is a fundamental component of a nation’s social and economic development because when people have access to affordable and high-quality childcare services, they can participate more fully in the workforce, which contributes to economic growth.
Stakeholders also shared that it supports children’s early development, setting the stage for a more productive future workforce.
They noted that expanding access to quality childcare has the potential to yield multi-generational impacts by improving women’s economic empowerment, child outcomes, family welfare, business productivity and overall economic growth.
It was discovered that too many families lack suitable childcare options, restricting women’s employment opportunities, productivity and income and reducing women’s empowerment and well-being, and leaving many children in unsafe and unstimulating environments
Minister Amongi noted that the mental foundational programme, policy and framework focuses on to ensure that young children born from birth up to about five years are given care that should enable them develop cognitive, physical, and psychologically that can make them contribute into the economy.
“I’m glad to note that on Monday cabinet passed the early childhood care and education policy that now recognises the need to strengthen coordination among all stakeholders to start with parents as the first caregivers….so guidelines will be produced to make sure that parents know what to teach their children, because we are told that children grow the brain of a child grow faster within the first three years of their life. Actually, within the first three years, the growth is at 80% of their brain.”
She added, “So we have come up with this policy to ensure that parents are sensitised and given guidelines on how to take care of children the first three years that will make them develop into productive but also intelligent children. That when they joined the pre-primary and primary, they are educated and exposed into aspects that are grown to their brain that can make them develop.” Minister said that the policy also recognises the role of government as very crucial in delivering early childhood care.
“We have approved that Ministry of Education should cost the infrastructure required to deliver the early childhood education. We have agreed that the early childhood care should begin at three years, three to five years and six years is when you enrol in primary. So within that context, it will be the Minister of Education to come up with the costing to expand infrastructure at government Primary School to introduce preprimary.”
Under the policy, Amongi said Ministry of Education also is supposed to come up with guidelines to license private people who are running childcare services as a business.
The policy looks at the early hours that young children are taken to the care facilities and the fee structure.
In the policy, the Ministry of Education is tasked to come up with a curriculum for pre-primary that is cognizant of their brain development.
Dr. Jacklyn Makaaru, Director Ace Policy Research Institute (APRI) noted that it is important that the first three years, children are nurtured, cared for, and fully supported because it is where a child develops significantly much higher than later years in life.
“So we want to nurture these years so that by the children enter pre-primary phase to have developed strong relationships with their caregivers but we also want to have programming for caregivers where we teach them how to parent. The returns to investments in early childhood care are immense.”
The policy, she said will help to bridge the gaps on who determines quality, what’s quality, who determines the hours of operation of these childcare spaces because most of them are private, some of them are attachments to primary schools in form of P.1As, P1Cs, some are faith based but no one has guided on what the hours should be.
“I don’t think it’s proper that children are waking up at 4am to go to an early learning centre but that’s because the parents have to work, so we need standards on how should a childcare establish.”
Emmanuela Mulondo, Executive Director, Earliers Foundation noted that the was needed as early as yesterday because “we cannot say that the earliers is the most important stage of the child’s life and you don’t show it.”
“The sector was in the hands of a private sector but if we are to move as a country into a middle income status, we have to move with all the children. So with this policy, it means that we shall have a certain level of standards and quality so that we can provide all the children of Uganda.”