Promoting and sustaining a quality pre-primary workforce

• In Event: The Equity Initiative: Traveling the Road of Expanding Access to Quality Pre-Primary Education Opportunities: Towards a Competent and Efficient Sub-sector

Proposal

While mothers and fathers are widely acknowledged as critical providers of care and stimulation that influence young children’s development and learning, research also tells us that other significant adults, including early years ‘workers’ (practitioners, teachers, carers, etc.), can contribute significantly to positive child outcomes, even in situations of adversity. While many low and lower-middle income countries recognise this and have accordingly prioritized early childhood education at political level, most lag significantly behind when it comes to access and quality to early learning programmes. A significant challenge is that they do not have adequate workforces in place that are fit for purpose and able to provide ‘good enough’ services when and where children most need them. Practitioners working in this sub-sector are frequently under skilled, underpaid, unsupported and undervalued. Mostly, it is vulnerable and poverty affected children who are affected by this inadequate provision, perpetuating inequality and keeping people locked in poverty. Governments need urgently to pay attention to ensuring that there are enough pre-primary workers and that systems for management, data collection and management as well as career paths and training are sufficiently provided for. Without a systematic approach to building and managing a workforce that is able to rapidly expand services of quality across the ages and stages of development, the development of young children in LMICs will continue to be at risk.

This session calls for urgent attention to pre-primary workforce building, arguing that without a systemic approach which maps a workforce that will meet country needs followed by a plan which addresses management systems, data collection and practitioner registration, employment options together with career pathing, training and ongoing professional development, the sub-sector will not be able to take the leap out of an often haptic, scattershot model of provision.

Author

• Sherri Le Mottee, AfCEN