Harmonise legislation on ECDE, CoG tells Parliament

The Council of Governors has asked Parliament to harmonise legislation affecting Early Childhood Education (ECDE) to end the problems currently bedevilling the sector.

Kericho Governor Paul Chepkwony, the CoG Education Committee chairman, said Thursday that lack of proper laws and policies has hurt the ECDE sector, which falls under county governments.

Prof Chepkwony, who spoke after consultative meeting with stakeholders from the education sector including representatives from Kenya Nation Union of Teachers (Knut) in Nairobi, decried the lack of an ECDE development policy in the country.

"With no Early Childhood Development policy in place, counties have been forced to develop legislation in a vacuum. The danger of developing laws without policy is that there will be disharmony in the entire legal framework," said Chepkwony.

He said development of ECDE centres has been a big challenge in most schools.

Knut Secretary General Wilson Sossion, who represented education stakeholders at the meeting, said the national government must address, as a matter of urgency, the acute shortage of ECDE teachers in the country.

"There are close to 3 million early childhood learners in this country, while the county governments have only employed about 4,000 ECDE teachers. The national government, together with the counties, must address this problem and hire an additional 66,000 tutors for these children," he said.