Education CS Amina Mohammed on Wednesday launched a National Pre-Primary Education Policy.
The new policy will offer guidance to pre-primary education, popularly known as nursery education and service providers throughout the country.
The guidance will ensure children are better prepared for Primary school education and formal education in general under the two-year Pre-primary Education experience.
“The launch of this policy is a critical step towards laying a firm foundation for the education of our children,” Amina said in Mombasa.
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The CS said the principles and standards met by the new pre-primary education programme policy would minimize repetition and dropout rates and improve learning capabilities for the learners.
Amina stated that the government would establish Early Childhood Development (ECDE) Centers in five counties.
The pre-primary education model would be adopted in the centers and provide support to the pre-primary education providers.
She further lauded the government for the increased recognition and support for the Early Childhood Development stating there was an increase in nursery school enrollment from 69.4 per cent in 2012 to 77.1 per cent in 2017.
She also noted that more than 80 per cent of early childhood teachers were trained.
Amina assured that the Ministry would continue supporting County governments by providing central coordination of early childhood education, incorporation of pre-primary education into basic education structure and integration of pre-primary education into the competency-based curriculum.
Pre-primary education still faces some challenges which are high child-teacher ratio, poor physical infrastructure, inadequate teaching and learning materials, limited play spaces and play equipment as well as limited capacity for developing professionals in the sub-sector.
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) provided technical and financial support to the formulation of the Policy.
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