By ARTHUR MWANSA
ZAMBIA National Education Coalition board chairperson Elly Siakassasa says Constituent Development Fund (CDF) guidelines should be amended to include a provision for funds to be allocated to early childhood and education (ECE) programmes.
Ms Siakassasa said this recently in a statement made available to the Femail by ZANEC programme officer for research information and advocacy Nelson Banda.
This follows the just-ended CDF consultative meeting in Solwezi. The objective was to bring different stakeholders together to discuss the financing of early education at community level using the CDF.
Ms Siakassasa said the meeting also recommended that the Ministry of Finance and National Planning should also exempt the education sector from the wage and recruitment freeze as the sector needs more teachers including pre-school teachers in 2014 and beyond.
Recently, Government announced the freezing of salary increments and recruitment of civil servants for the next two year.
She said that there is need for the Government to put together more resources in ECE programmes at community level and deploy more teachers because ECE is the foundation for all children.
The chairperson said it is unfortunate that most children come from homes where they cannot afford books and other learning materials, hence the need for the provision of free ECE services.
Ms Siakassasa also identified the lack of infrastructure, furniture and learning materials, long distances to the centres, poor curriculum, illegal mushrooming of ECE structures and expensive private pre-schools with low standards and unqualified teachers as the major challenges facing the provision of ECE in the country.
She said participants at the meeting felt that there is need for ECE centres to be monitored by the council to ensure they provided quality education.
Ms Siakassasa said ZANEC and the Ministry of Education should also come up with an implementation framework for ECE in communities and to ensure that members are sensitised on the framework.
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