Narok Early Childhood Development Education stakeholders have called for concerted efforts to address issues affecting the quality of education in the county.
Speaking Tuesday during the meeting, Education CEC Robert Simotwo called on the stakeholders to enhance their collaboration through establishment of a technical working group that will champion for better quality of education.
Simotwo said effective collaboration among key stakeholders will improve the quality of education and provide a platform to deal with any emerging issues in the sector.
“Today I urge all our stakeholders to come together through an enhanced technical working group to help the county provide the best for our children especially those at ECDE level,” Simotwo said.
He encouraged Community Based Organisations to not only focus on primary and secondary education but also include ECDE as it lays foundation in the children’s education life.
The officer added that the county is working on a plan to launch an ECDE digital literacy programme that will help the children acquire computer literacy at a young age.
At the same time, he said the county is still reporting low enrolment rate in the ECDE at 78 per cent, meaning there is a large number of aged-children who are yet to join school.
Education Chief Officer Simon Kurarur said the county has no ECDE policies, which explains the challenges the department is facing.
“The main cause of the challenges that we are facing right now as department of ECDE is that we do not have a policy that guides operations,” Kurarur said.
He called on the members of the technical working group to ensure the county gets a policy that will help in the administration of ECDE as well as to monitor the collaboration of partners in the provision of education.
"A policy is very important as it will help to eliminate duplication of responsibilities by the stakeholders as well as provide a guide on how to deal with children below the age of 5 years," he said.
His sentiments were echoed by Antony Makori from the Department of Education who said education is a delicate issue which should be handled with utmost care as it involves shaping the county’s future.
He emphasised that the formation of a technical group of stakeholders is key to the adoption of a county ECDE policy that will shape the activities that involve education.
Makori further called on the two levels of government to facilitate ground for collaboration as the two sectors of education are interdependent.
Narok has made great strides in the ECDE sector among them the construction of 189 ECDE classes while rolling out digital learning programme.
