Capacity Assessment of Community based early childhood development center and school based preprimary class

ABSTRACTS

Early Childhood Development program equips children with the skills and provides them with opportunities for their holistic   development that includes physical, social, emotional and cognitive aspects of their life. ECD is a multifaceted discipline which comprises health, nutrition, care, early stimulation, education and so on. Teachers, parents, children and the other stakeholders play significant role in ensuring quality ECD services. The capacity of these actors largely influence and ensure the quality of ECD. It is, therefore, essential to enhance and ensure the capacity of the stakeholders, contributors and  the organizations that are directly linked with ECD program. This research, therefore, focused to  explore the capacity of the stakeholders of the ECD services, particularly the capacity of the Community Based ECD to foster .  the holistic development of children.

This study was conducted in seven districts of Nepal covering the areas of  the Karnali, Hills and Terai regions. Udayapur, Siraha, Mahotri, Baglung,Kailai Kanchanpur, and Humla districts were the sites for the study. The samples for the study were purposively selected from the community and school based ECD centers from the VDCs focused by Save the Children.  In course of data collection, the target sites were observed and facilitators/teachers, children and their parents and the key persons of the partner organization were interviewed. The data was analyzed, interpreted and discussed on the basis of ECD directory, curriculum and standards.

The findings of the study included the capacity of ECD centers, facilitators, parents, children and partner organization. It was found that 83% of ECD centers had their own building and 13.6% of the ECD centers were running in the building managed by community. One ECD center was running in rented and the others were running in VDC buildings.

Regarding the capacity of ECD centers in terms of learning materials and resources it was found that 68.2% of the ECD centers lacked adequate play and learning materials

Similarly, children's access to play materials was also found inadequate. Majority of the ECD centers (59.1%) needed improvement in the access to play and learning materials to the children. It was observed that materials available in the centers were not properly used for learning purpose. The study revealed that 71.2% of the ECD centers had not managed learning areas in ECD classroom as mentioned in ECD curriculum.

The resources for ECD/PPC centers were generated by municipality/ VDC and parents were also asked to pay fees as the source of fund. In terms of health, nutrition and First Aid services the majority of ECD/ PPC centers were found poorly managed.

Since 27.8% community based centers and only one PPC (out of thirty) was found to implement ECD curriculum, the ECD/ PPC centers were scarcely found to  practice sound pedagogical practices as per the ECD standard . The role performances of facilitators from community based ECD centers were found considerably high in the comparison of the facilitators from PPC centers.

 The majority (68.2%) of the ECD centers were found to  be in need of improvement in the use of learning corners. A  majority (86.7%) of PPCs needed improvement and nearly half of the Community Based ECD centers needed improvement in the use of learning corners.  Thus, the Community Based ECD centers  were better in the use of learning corners than the PPCs.

The progress of children in terms of their physical, social, emotional and cognitive development was hardly found to take place in desired way in both the community and school based ECD centers. However, the performances of community based ECD centers in terms of four areas of development (physical, social, emotional and cognitive) were found somehow better than those of the children from PPCs. But in the case of early learning status children from PPCs were found better in terms of Maths and reading texts.