Improving Early Childhood Care and Education in Ghana Through Community-Run Play Groups

Children who receive quality early childhood education and care (“ECCE”) are proven to be healthier, do better and stay longer in school, and have better economic trajectories in adult life. But it is estimated that over 250m children under 5 worldwide - the majority of whom are situated in rural communities in LMIC - do not receive adequate ECCE [The Lancet ECD Series: 2007, 2011 & 1016]. As a result these already disadvantaged children are less likely to succeed in school, in turn giving them lower earning potential and placing them at greater risk of poor health, poverty, early marriage and parenthood. Our project targets rural Ghana - although we believe the learnings and approaches can easily be used elsewhere. Ghana has relatively advanced ECCE policies and has introduced two years of kindergarten into the primary education system. However two barriers to ECCE persist. The first is that policy efforts are focused on “schooling” yet this strategy is proving ineffective in achieving learning. The quality of kindergarten (“KG”) is low and is marred by a lack of trained teachers, large class sizes, lack of resources, teacher absenteeism and rote-based teaching. A recent Save the Children/UNICEF study in Malawi estimates that primary children spend 76% of their time at home. Therefore, the focus on formal education by-passes parents and reinforces a false belief that quality ECCE can only be provided by professionals. The second and most critical barrier in Ghana (and across sub-Saharan Africa) is poor parenting practices, caused by lack of confidence, lack of aspiration and lack of information. Over the past two years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (“IFS”) and Innovations for Poverty Action (“IPA”) conducted a randomized control trial of our program. Baseline surveys on 2400 Mothers in 80 communities reveal: only 13% parents conducted any play activities with their children in the last 3 days. Less than half of primary caregivers know the name of their child’s KG teacher. The study also found that only 1/3 children aged 4-6 years could count 3 counters. It is therefore vital that more effort is made to build the skills of parents so that they can provide better nurturing care.