Human Resource Adequacy in Early Childhood Educational Development in Nigeria

Abstract

The early childhood educational system depends heavily on human resources or manpower for the execution of its programme. Nigeria pledged its commitment to this, by providing quality and comprehensive early child care and development education for all pre-schoolers.  This is the bedrock upon which all other educational levels are built with the age bracket of 0 – 4 years.  The study was based on the Pestalozzi theory of education. Pestalozzi believed in the ability of every human being to learn, the right of every individual to education and that education should develop the power of the head, heart and hands, to create individuals who would be capable of knowing what was right or wrong and act according to such knowledge. The teacher plays a major role in developing the power of the head, heart and hands by implementing the educational policy.  Education introduced to the child at the early stage of life leads to the development of the head, heart and hands which is the social regeneration of humanity and involves a series of interactive teaching–learning processes in the form of subjects using a well-structured and guided curriculum.  Human resources are the required manpower for an efficiently and adequately developed teaching and learning process to take place in early child care and development education.  The teacher-pupil ratio of 1:15 helps in the adequacy of the teaching-learning process in ECCDE. Available data showed that the total enrolment of pupils was 81970 and the number of teachers was 1807, with teacher/ratio as 1:45. To address the identified challenges of manpower supply adequacy, the following recommendations were made. In Nigeria for any teacher who  was  qualified to teach in Early Childhood Education: the individual must have the National Certificate in Education in Early Childhood Education (NCE) and be certified under the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN). It was suggested that the available NCE teachers be given on-the-job training on a regular basis to keep them abreast of the current educational programme. This paper further recommended the urgent need to employ trained manpower in early child care and development education system, and also motivate them.