Early Child Care Developrnent and Education (ECCDE) is the care, protection, stimulation and leaming pronnoted in children from age 0 – 4 years in a cache or nursery.
The purpose of Early Child Care Development and Education shall be to:
- Effect a smooth transition from the home to the school;
- prepare the child for the primary level of education;
- provide adequate care, supervision and security for the children while their parents are at work;
- inculcate social, moral norms and values;
- inculcate in the child the spirit of i#enquiry and creativity through the exploration of nature, the environment, art, music and the use of toys, etc;
- develop a sense of co-operation and team-spirit;
- stimulate in the child good habit, including good health habit; and
- teach the rudiments of numbers; letters, colours, shapes, forms, etc, through play.
Government shall:
- Set and monitor minimum standard for ECCDE centres;
- develop and disseminate curriculum materials such as the
Integrated Early Child Care Development (IECD) Policy, National
Minimum Standard for the establishment of Early Child Care
Education Centers, IECD Curriculum, IECD Implementation Guidelines and all other materials that will enhance the implementation of ECCDE;
- encourage both community and private efforts in the establishment of ECCDE centres based on set standards;
- make provision in teacher education programmes for specialization in early child care and education, and for retraining of teachers;
- ensure that the curriculum of teacher education is oriented towards play-way method;
- ensure that ECCDE Centres adopt the following caregiver infant ratios:
(i) Cache shall be 1:10; (ii) Nursery 1:25;
- develop suitable ECCDE curriculum for nationwide implementation;
- supervise and control quality of ECCDE centres;
make provision for the production and effective utilization of learning and instructional materials in adequate numbers; and
ensure that the medium of instruction is principally the rmffertongue or the language of the imnnediate community; and to this end will:
- develop the orthography of rnore Nigerian languages; and
- produce textbooks, supplementary readers and other instructional materials in Nigerian languages.
