This article was first published in New Vision on January 29, 2014
By Owen Wagabaza
Children who go to nursery schools when they are as young as two or three are likely to have up to a year’s head start over those who are exclusively cared for at home, according to research.
Experts say early education increases reading and numeracy skills at the primary school level. This partly answers the question of whether it is worth it for a parent to invest in nursery education.
Most parents who have sent their children to pre-school have reported positive experiences and have seen their children grow to be better prepared for the years of schooling to come. Some parents have had to learn the hard way, but this can be avoided.
“As a learning point, my first child missed nursery education and has always had problems conceptualising what he is taught,” Alice Muhimbo, a mother of three explains.
Pre-school teaches children the building blocks for the rest of their education journey. Children at a young age learn best through play and games. They learn numbers, letters and how to write their name.
The assistant commissioner for pre-primary education, Resty Muzibiri agrees that nursery or pre-primary education greatly improves the quality of education for learners.
She adds that early childhood is a crucial stage of life in terms of a child’s physical, intellectual, emotional and social development.
With this in mind, she says toddlers need positive early learning experiences to help their intellectual, social and emotional development.
Susan Baguma, the head teacher of a city nursery school says her kindergarten teaches a child to listen, obey, and cooperate.
“The children will know when it is time to play with others and time to go to class. Some come when they do not even know why they are at school,” Baguma says.
Leo Lubega, another nursery and primary school head teacher in Kampala, also says speech development is one of the first tools that a child will acquire in a nursery school.
Other benefits
Kindergartens are also avenues for children to acquire good healthy and socially acceptable habits. It is also at nursery schools that skills like how to use a toilet or latrine are taught to children. Letting children do what they want encourages individuality and decision-making.
More embrace nursery education
Of recent, the Government has been on a massive drive to promote early childhood learning. More parents are enrolling their children on early childhood education centres.
Indeed today, the number of nursery schools in the country has risen. With Kampala alone has over 250 nursery schools and about 7,000 countrywide.
Other studies
After a seven-year study released last year in the UK tracking professors of more than 3,000 children, Oxford, London and Nottingham’s universities found out, children with the longest exposure to nursery education did best in national tests of reading, writing and mathematics at the age of seven.
The benefit was evident for children of all social classes. The professors, from Oxford, London and Nottingham universities, found that preschool children were four to five months ahead of those brought up entirely at home when they started primary school at an average age of four years and nine months.
The latest wave of research from the Effective Pro[1]vision of Pre-School Education project found that this early advantage “has not washed out” by the age of seven.
Attainment levels in reading, writing and arithmetic were higher for preschool children from all social classes. The professors drew less clear-cut conclusions about the effect of preschool education on children’s behaviour.
They found children with one or two years’ experience of it were the least likely to behave anti-socially on arrival at primary school, with just 5.3% exhibiting problems of teasing, bullying or interfering with other children’s learning.
Among children without pre-school experience, this rose to 6.8% and among those at pre-school for three years it was 7.1%.
