2.4 Determinant factors or inputs for quality education provision
2.4.6 Parental and community involvement
Parental and community involvement in the ECD education programme renders the greatest influence to quality ECD education provision. UNESCO (2009) highlights the following key parental responsibilities for quality ECD education: provision include provision of required teaching and learning materials, funding the programme, attending school meetings and even provision of food to the children. In agreeing with this idea, Myers (2006) and Coleman (2013) elaborate the importance of the School Based Management Committee (SBMC) in mobilising parents to get involved in the education of their children by responding to their needs. Parents are expected to fulfil their expectations for the education of their children.
There is a clear indication that parents should fully support their children‟s education, financially, materially and via in-service. Myers (2006) and Coleman (2013) are paying attention to the importance of local governance in ECD schools. In Zimbabwe there is the SDC in the Education Act (1992), Statutory Instrument, (12 of 2005) and Statutory Instrument (105 of 2005), Zambia and its local governance (Chimombo, 2004) and Malawi
and its school committees (Rose, 2010). Local governances in ECD schools mobilise parents and communities to meet the needs of the children.
Consequently, parental and community engagement into school business promote local ownership and support and it is considered as the critical aspect for the provision of quality ECD education (Rao & Sun, 2010; ARNEC, 2012). It is a shared priority that parents, families and communities are involved in the education of their children (Ngwenya, 2010;
Laine, et al., 2011). The parents should uplift the name of the school by providing support to the school. The SEAMEO-INNOTECH (2012) report claims that sustainable quality child development is only possible through massive parental and community involvement in the ECD programmes. Legitimate parents and the community involvement play a vital role in promoting the ECD programme.
Kyoung (2012) argues that there is need for schools and parents to listen to the children.
Children are the main players in ECD education. Their voices need to be given a chance to manifest, for example, they need equipment that is child-friendly during learning through play activities, a curriculum that puts their developmental need first. Thus, in all respects be it the curriculum, pedagogies, physical environment, teaching and learning materials; child appropriateness should be of paramount importance in order to promote quality ECD education provision.
The community and parents should support ECD schools by sending children to school, providing teaching and learning facilities as well as funding the programme (Courtiney, 2008; Coleman, 2013). The school head has an important role in cementing the relationship between the teachers and community for improved resource procurement in the school. The school head has to facilitate a process that brings about a mutual understanding between the teachers and the parents and communities. The parents and community are mostly concerned with effective use of supplied resources by the teachers. As Rose (2010) and Coleman (2013) acknowledge that, community participation is often linked with the ability to mobilise, and make more efficient use of resources. The school head bears the highest post at the school and all decisions are activated from that post. He must therefore take full responsibility to develop relationships between the school and the community for effective resource mobilisation. This will put the SDC into play as the governing body for school (Zimbabwe
Statutory Instrument, 87 of 1992). Essentially, „genuine‟ community participation where parents are encouraged to given due respect and involved in decision-making in the ECD programme can best enhance resource procurement by schools (Coleman, 2013). This SDC makes a very important contribution in serving as a link between the parents and the school community. Hence, the school head will be responsible for maintaining a strong teacher- parental relationship as mediated by the SDC.
Parental participation in early education programmes is the most crucial aspect in the success of the school (Mpofu & Shumba, 2012; Coleman, 2013). One important source of school support is the legitimate parents of the children who promote the programme by actively taking part in making decisions (Cochran, 2007; Coleman, 2013). It is the duty of the school head to pave the way for the prudent participation into ECD programmes by the parents and communities under the auspices of the SDC in which the school head is an ex-officio member of the committee. While the parents are constitutionally partnered in the developmental planning of the ECD programme in the school, they ensure commitment and ownership of the school, which bring resources in the school.
However, teacher-parent association needs an open and fair relationship that give due respect to the positions held by parents in the committees. Coleman (2013) acknowledges that the relationships of the school community with the SDC are beset by many conflicts that are role centred. There is usually a role conflict between the SDC and the school leadership. It is either that the school head would want to take advantage of the illiterate parents that form the SDC or the school committee would also over-play their authority boundaries and make off- side play in the school head‟s area of responsibility. Therefore, this responsibility of working with the SDC in the process for ECD resource mobilisation needs much of the school head‟s expertise in communication skills and conflict resolutions.
2. 5 Trends of resource provision in Africa and the world
As we had the benchmarks in Section 2.4 for quality ECD education provision we also have to give lee way to the literature to explain how Sub-Saharan Africa and the world over are providing for the ECD programme. As has been discussed in Section 2.4; countries can best respond to resource demand contextually. In countries like China, funding of ECD
programme is shouldered by the communities due to lack of government resources (Korea Institute of Child Care and Education, 2011). This is also happening in Kenya, parents and communities responded positively to the call by the Harambee and immersed themselves in fundraising (Myers, 2006) and resource mobilisation to establish pre-school institutions ranging from day-care centres, nursery schools, and Koranic schools to Kindergartens attached to primary schools. This situation is prevalent in Malawi; parents, communities and traditional leaders are obliged to contribute to ECD educational programme. For example, they contribute in cash or in kind like providing labour and materials to school construction and maintenance (Rose, 2010). The Zimbabwean government has mandated the SDCs to develop, establish and maintain ECD classes in primary schools (Statutory Instrument, 87 of 1992; Statutory Instrument 12 of 2005; Statutory Instrument 106 of 2005). China, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe have one thing in common. The governments decentralised the mandate to local authorities to run these ECD schools. Thus the SDCs were instructed by the government to mobilise resources for establishing and maintaining ECD classes in their areas. Harambee in Kenya, preschools are managed by committees that are elected by the local community (Kabiru & Njenga, 2009). Kabiru and Njenga proceed to say that these committees spearhead land acquisition and building materials through community collaborative efforts. Kenyan people under the leadership of the local traditional leaders, made contributions in the form of cash, labour and building materials and created the centres for ECD.
In Zimbabwe the government called for the communities to establish and maintain the ECD classes in primary schools across the country. These communities responded positively to the government‟s call. ECD-A and B classes are integrated in primary schools of Zimbabwe (Chikutuma & Mapolisa, 2013). This is entirely the efforts and contributions of the communities. However, Shizha and Kariwo (2011) argue that though parents and communities are willing to take the government initiative on ECD, they are restricted by poverty, especially in rural areas where parents are very poor.
The Palestinian government came to realise its own limited capacity to bring about direct improvement in infrastructural developments in pre-schools than local and international communities built new structures and added classrooms onto existing ones and installed new sanitation systems that made the environment more kid-friendly (Middle East & North
American Organisations‟ report, 2009). It is clear that in Palestine, national and international communities provided infrastructure, teaching and learning equipment and met all the costs in running the ECD programme. The Palestinian government failed to subsidise ECD in the country and the donor community offers their help (UNICEF, 2009).
Africa and beyond its borders (China & Palestine) communities are responsible for all infrastructural developments in ECD schools. This is done through community mobilisation or networking with local and international communities to make the ECD programme viable.
World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF and other NGOs like Plan International, Save the Children and others are helping in the ECD programmes (UNESCO, 2009).
Sub-Saharan African communities are playing the major roles in funding and running of ECD programme in various countries (Rose, 2010). In some countries local communities fund ECD by contracting and sponsoring on-job-training for para-professionals, creating and maintaining infrastructure and providing materials and equipment for teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2010). The communities have an understanding of their expected roles and responsibilities, which broadly correspond with statutory roles in the government (as discussed above). This community participation is understood as the contribution that is provided by the community in the form of hiring teachers and funding the construction and running of ECD programmes (UNICEF, 2010; UNESCO, 2012).
Rose (2003) and Coleman (2013) acknowledge the situation in rural areas and proposed that, while parents may fail to pay fees and levies for their children, cost-sharing with parents and communities are necessary especially when resources are inadequate in the schools. The school development committees (SDCs) are there to establish strong relationships between the school and the communities in order to mobilise monetary and non-monetary contribution by communities for school development. In reality, different degrees of participation can be considered, depending on the extent and type of involvement by community members; for instance, classroom construction, brick moulding and digging pits for toilets to mention a few. As has been discussed above, in most African countries, the greater percentage on resource contribution to ECD programmes is provided by parents, communities and national and international NGOs. Parents are paying fees and levies, buying uniforms and helping in
(Coleman, 2013) in constructing play centres. NGOs are providing different forms of aid in remote rural ECD schools (UNICEF, 2006).
Remote rural communities have material resources which can provide much needed assistance to local ECD schools (Coleman, 2013). In Palestine local communities are developing ECD play centres by constructing the out-door play centres using poles extracted from trees in their localities (Middle East & North America Organisation, 2012). It is less costly and culturally correct to use local materials to construct play equipment for ECD.
Local community individuals with expertise in carpentry carve ECD wooden puzzles and toys and wooden blocks to use in their manipulative lessons (UNICEF, 2010). ECD learning materials are easily accessed from the locality, by both teaches and families (Coleman, 2013).
This entails that teachers and family members can make teaching and learning materials using available resources found in their localities.
Besides the construction of play equipment (Coleman, 2013) ECD schools are organising summer arts camps and involving local artists and teachers to bring music, art and drama to ECD children and their families through colourful, fun activities. Multi-stakeholder inclusiveness is of primary importance. Like the involvement of parents and the communities in arts programmes to expand the appreciation for arts and culture in ECD. There are people who can offer knowledge and expertise to teachers and children in the school; local drummers, dancers, poets, musicians can be incorporated as resource persons. The above ideas used in other contexts might be of great help to other schools and communities; however, because of the limited relationship between the ECD schools and the community, little advantage is taken by schools of the great knowledge that is available in the communities (Alexander, 2008). It is necessary to have a variety of skills for successful family, school, and community partnerships; however the most important of all is for the school head to understand the roles that are supposed to be played by the parents in school programmes.
The Kenyan government offers subsidised training for its ECD teachers in the country‟s education college (Kabiru & Njenga, 2009; Oruta, 2009). The training of ECD teachers by colleges and universities in Zimbabwe is a crucial aspect on how the demand for teachers can be improved in the country (Abadzi, 2008). The Ministry of Education is in charge of the
training and monitoring systems to improve the quality of ECD programmes as well as the training of ECD supervisory personnel (Middle East & North America Organisation, 2012).
ANERA (a non-profit organisations based in Palestine) in coordination with the Ministry of Education is developing ECD teachers with occupational standards for caregivers as clusters (MENARO, 2012). In Palestine the national system for training and certification of ECD teachers is government based (UNICEF, 2010).
The learning dispositions cited above, reached an agreement that the governments and/or NGOs are taking the full burden of training the ECD teachers. In all the countries referred to above, training of teachers is a program which is government based with the Ministry of Education manning the program. Those qualified teachers who are accredited by this ministry are put on government full teacher salary. The ECD programme is still gaining its momentum and the number of qualified teachers is presently insignificant for all schools and in many countries, they will increase with time (UNICEF, 2010). ECD is a new comer and qualified teachers to teach ECD are still limited. This is however, common in most countries but since the ministries are training, gradually all schools will be staffed with qualified teachers (UNICEF, 2010).
Since not all schools are staffed with qualified ECD teachers, some communities employed para-professionals who teach the ECD classes in the country (UNICEF, 2010). In Kenya school committees are paying these pre-school teachers (Kabiru & Njenga, 2009; Oruta, 2009). Zimbabwe (Statutory Instrument, 106 of 2005) gives authority and powers to the SDCs to hire para-professionals who teach ECD classes in the schools. The levies that are collected from the parents are used as allowances for the para-professionals. However, no country has confirmed the amount payable to these para-professionals.
South Africa among other Sub-Saharan African countries is funding its early learning programmes. Grants are given to community based ECD centres per child basis through provincial government funds (ADEA, 2006). With the Chinese there is the „Hope project‟
where the government collected contributions from local and international charitable organisations to establish and maintain ECD schools in selected poor communities (Xu, Wu
& Zhao, 2010). In Lesotho recurrent funds for school fees for the Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs), training of personnel, maintenance of the buildings, and purchase of
teaching and learning materials are done through donations from local and international charitable organisations such as UNICEF and World Bank (Mncube & Makhasane, 2011, p.
167). Most African countries have benefited from international NGOs, domestic NGOs, and international organisations; the quality of ECD schools improved because of these contributions (UNICEF, 2010). To sustain the resource base of all ECD programmes in schools, there is need for different stakeholders to continue to have unity of purpose working in partnership and supporting one another. However, this partnership, with international donors, is only possible if the government has entered into bilateral communication and relationships with donor countries. The civil society and the vulnerable communities might be prepared to receive donations, but it is only possible when the government has adopted an open door policy on the issue.
In South Africa there are no health facilities established at each ECD centre, however, the Ministry of Health is taking the burden of regularly visiting these schools for health and nutritional check-ups (Mandela, 2005). In the case of Canada; health facilities are established at school level even in remote rural areas but no feeding is done (Rose, 2010). Rose proceeds to acknowledge the Canadian schools funding the training of their health personnel and their salaries. According to the above dispositions, South African nurses, from adjacent clinics regularly move around in schools to give primary health check-ups to children, check on nutritional health care practices and attend to health problems in teachers and children (Mandela, 2005). In most of the developed countries cited above, they have health facilities already for their ECD children.
In this era of decreasing government budgets, increasing decentralisation, and in a region of burgeoning democracies and civil strife, it is imperative to look and to learn from organisations and governments in the region who are experimenting, making investments in and successfully supporting ECD (Report on ECD policy review in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2009). As suggested by this citation, these school committees under the leadership of the school heads can apply for donations from NGOs nationally and internationally. Schools that make requisitions for donation always get them either in the form of books, play material, feeding and even health related packages (UNICEF, 2010).
However, it is important to examine the purpose of parent-school partnerships in school governance and the interjection into school development by donor communities is raising questions with regards to the role of the state. Community and donor participation should work hand-in-hand and check the government, not substitute it (Myers, 2006). The most outstanding consensus that these African leaders agreed on was that government must take the responsibility to provide quality programmes for all children, and give protection and support to their families (Aidoo, 2006).
2.6 Teacher professional development and empowerment as a tool for resource