Early childhood care and education
Advancing Early Childhood Education in Liberia: Addressing Access, Overage Enrollment, and Smooth Transitions to Primary Education
Executive Summary, The ECCE policyprogramme in Liberia aims to increase access to equitable genderresponsive and inclusive early childhood education Its ultimate goal is to ensure that children enter education at the right age and progress through the system in healthy and safe environments The programme specifically targets the population of young children in LiberiaThe primary problem that the policyprogramme seeks to address is the high number of overage children in early childhood education Challenges such as low access to ECCE schools long distances to the nearest ECCE schools and a lack of linkage between ECCE and primary schools contribute to this problem The data from the EMIS report of 20192020 indicates that there are 542696 students enrolled in ECCE with a higher number of overage children compared to those of the appropriate ageTo tackle these challenges the Ministry of Education in collaboration with UNICEF and WECARE developed the Community and HomeBased programmes These programmes have successfully provided foundational literacy and numeracy skills to 10979 children with 4604 children transitioning to primary educationIn terms of policy and legal frameworks the ECD policy of Liberia covers the age brackets of a4ccc37bbe3a41ea8294b0cc0a0088c3 and 35 while the Education Act covers the age bracket of 68 However there is a gap in coverage for the age group of 5 to 6 which focuses on preschool education and transitioning to the primary level To address this gap the government with technical support from UNESCO and UNICEF plans to develop an ECE policy in 2022Overall the objectives of the ECCE policyprogramme are to improve access reduce overage enrollment and create a smooth transition from early childhood education to primary education
Liberia -