About 200 million children globally fail to reach their potential in cognitive development because of inter-related factors of poverty, inadequate care and poor health. The high prevalence of poverty generally leads to inadequate food and poor hygiene and sanitation which consequently increase the vulnerability of children to diseases including malnutrition and related disorders.
Severe clinical malnutrition also leads to deficits in intelligence and school performance. These issues affecting children need to be urgently addressed if developing countries are to defeat poverty and hunger; and to ensure that all children complete primary schooling, respectively. The first few years of human development are crucial as it is a time when somatic changes including growth and development of the brain occur.
In general early cognitive development is one of the major factors that determine school performance and progress at a later stage in life. There is a strong association between early childhood factors and primary school performance and progress: it has been demonstrated that children who have participated in early childhood education and related programmes generally remain in school, are unlikely to repeat classes and their class performance is much better compared to those who have never attended pre-primary programmes. In Sub-Sahara Africa not many pupils complete their primary school and school retention is generally a major challenge. Within such a context where school retention is a challenge, increasing access to early child development programmes would help in terms of creating interest in school and ensuring school retention among the school going age children.
Early school learning also improves children’s health and nutritional status. The proportion of children aged less than five years of age who are underweight declines as the preschool coverage in a country increases. It has also been demonstrated that stimulation and the provision of food supplements to improve children’s nutritional status improves motor and mental development and cognitive ability. Early childhood programmes also contribute towards reduction of fertility rates, for example, the incidence of motherhood for girls aged 10-18 is much less among those who had attended preschool as children compared to girls of the same age who had not attended preschool.
The benefits of preschool exposure are well understood but only 12% of the preschool age children in Sub-Saharan Africa aged between 3 and 6 years are actually enrolled in preschool. The benefits of early childhood development programmes only appear 2-3 decades later in life.
Since the benefits of early childhood development are well known, it is important that countries in the African region should aim at increasing the coverage of preschool education. Despite the evidence that early childhood development programmes have significant positive impacts on children’s later life and on the wider society, investments in such programmes especially in resource poor countries where there is a huge number of vulnerable children who would benefit from them the most have been low.
In sub-Saharan Africa, less than 10% of public education expenditure goes to pre-primary education and this is also the case among donors. It has been argued that in some countries in Africa publicly funded early childhood development constitute a relatively new concept and in countries where there are prevailing teething problems with delivery of primary school education, there is a need to address these problems first before embarking fully on early childhood development programmes.
Today Gender
…with Thelma Asantewaa
