Background: The value of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is recognised as beneficial to the child and society. Research evidence on pre-primary ECCE access and quality in Sub-Saharan Africa is scarce.Aim: The aim of this article is to examine Botswana’s pre-primary school programme in enhancing accessibility and quality of ECCE provision.Setting: The study was conducted in 12 of the 24 primary schools implementing the pre-primary programme in a Gaborone sub-region.Methods: Adaptations of the Levesque Access Framework and Woodhead Quality Framework were applied to this qualitative research study. Using semi-structured interviews, 11 pre-primary teachers, 5 school heads or Heads of Department, and 3 Principal Education Officers (PEO) were interviewed, and the data collected was analysed thematically.Results: The findings suggest that the main barriers to the effective pre-primary programme rollout are supply-side and systemic. These barriers represent the public institutiona...

Introduction: Accreditation is the process of certifying academic programmes in institutions of learning. It often involves the comparison of statutory provisions and the reality, sadly in Nigeria, the provision of the statutory documents as regards accreditation is largely at variance with the results of accreditation exercises carried out by the regulatory bodies in charge of accreditation. However, the magical means through which most higher learning academic institutions gain accreditation leaves much to be desired. Purpose: This paper therefore attempted an examination of the provisions of statutory documents as regards accreditation, comparing the provisions of the NUC's BMAS; NCCE's minimum standard and accreditation toolkit with the results of the needs committee set up to do on the spot assessment of the Universities on one hand and the NUC's accreditation results published recently on the other hand. Methods: A short survey was conducted to answer fifteen questions, related to such listed as requirements for accreditation of Early Childhood Education in Colleges of Education. Heads of Departments or their lieutenants, in the Colleges, were asked to fill out the answers to the questions using the Google form platform. The convenience sampling technique was used to select ten public owned colleges of education five-each from the southern and northern parts of Nigeria out of a total of seventy five public owned colleges of education. Results: It was discovered that the accreditation results of the various colleges of education and universities offering early childhood educationmay not be said to be fully a reflection of reality on ground in these colleges of education and universities. Conclusion: This paper therefore postulated based on available information that the accreditation results often published or announcedmay be at variance with the reality in those schools. Academics and other players in the subsector may be culpable alongside the accreditation bodies, at giving non accurate accounts of the true situation of things during the accreditation of programmes, early childhood education inclusive.

The background of this research is that less than 10 per cent of the 846 ECE institutions in West Bandung District have accreditation of institutions, so the implementation quality doesn’t meet the education national standard. Accreditation, although it is an intermediate goal that must be achieved by each institution, has a great influence on the quality of implementation, the quality of graduates and the credibility of the institution. The purpose of the research is to describe the efforts and obstacles of ECE managers in achieving accreditation to improve the quality of education organization according to national education standard. The research uses descriptive qualitative for research method with case study approach in West Bandung District. Research results of the study: (1) the efforts of ECE managers in achieving institution accreditation; joining socialization, learning accreditation documents, consulting with the supervisors, taking discussions and workshops with fellow i...

Beginning in 2006, a three-week Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) training program entitled “Early Childhood Education for West and Central African Countries” has been conducted every year by Ochanomizu University, Tokyo, Japan. This study measures the outcome, whether or not the training program has reached its objective. The study assesses participants’ level of knowledge of each module (ECD, child-centered care, inequity, teacher development and training, and evaluation) and their attitudes towards applying their obtained knowledge to their individual countries. The participants in the 2009 program, which include 12 participants from five countries, were asked to fill in questionnaires at the end of the program. The study finds that the level of understanding, as well as the attitudes towards application, was in general high, with the highest score for child-centered care and the lowest score for the evaluation module. The study also indicates that although participan...

Early childhood education (ECE) in Ghana has grown from a traditional approach to a more formalised and modernised system of care and education services for young children. As a valued practice, ECE reflects a distributive, regulatory or redistributive policy. The paper analyses Ghana’s ECE policy implementation using McDonnell and Elmore’s framework of five elemental instruments. We supported the analysis with ECE policy documents and research evidence in ECE. Enabling and inhibiting factors affecting ECE were identified and ways were devised to enhance the latter. We established that while ECE has somewhat addressed equity and access issues, concerns exist regarding implementation factors such as quality teacher training and parent involvement for promoting effective programs. The paper recommends the need to evaluate ECE and provide planned and ongoing opportunities to advance the professional development, capacity, and motivation of ECE implementers, especially early childhood t...