Education stakeholders have been urged to speedily resolve the crisis facing nursery schools to enable children get quality education in their formative years.
The Limuru Sub-County Quality and Standards Assurance officer, Benson Kimani while making this call, observed that nursery schools are facing a myriad of challenges ranging from lack of proper administration, financing and a shortage of teachers.
He stated that a government directive to put nursery schools under the management of county governments issued in 2014 has not helped to improve the state of the institutions.
The officer cited the current ongoing national recruitment of teachers by the teachers’ service commission (TSC) observing that it has not advertised positions for Early Childhood Development Education (ECDE) teachers.
“Nursery school teachers are stuck between TSC and the county government which has no mandate to to hire them,” he said.
He stated that this stand-off is affecting the quality of education offered at the current public ECDE centres.
Kimani observed that the institutions hardly receive any money from the government and have therefore mostly rely on financing from parents.
“The teachers are paid through board agreements with parents and this tends to be quite insufficient,” he said.
The quality assurance officer reiterated the need for teachers to be motivated in their work so that they can in return have a sense of commitment.
He noted that being employed by the government creates a sense of stability and should enable the employee access various benefits.
He said stakeholders should resolve the underlying issues so that nursery schools can be in a position to equip their learners with quality education.
At the same time, Kimani issued a warning to proprietors of ECDE centres operating under the guise of daycare institutions. He said that each school needs to be certified and registered by education officers in order to operate.
He said that a crackdown will be conducted on daycare institutions in Limuru which currently has 40 registered public nursery schools.