Children should formally enroll in school at five years-Experts

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | As a studies resume, parents have been warned to beware of schools that call themselves kindergartens and yet offer the primary school curriculum. Experts in Child Health and Development argue that this is disastrous to the developing capabilities of the little child as exposure to complicated things is likely to cause them suffer a sense of failure, which affects their confidence later in life.

Dr. Godfrey Sui, an expert in Early Childhood Development at the Child Health and Development Center in Makerere University College of Health Sciences, says a child should be enrolled to a formal school earliest at five years or when they start showing key evidence of development such as when they can ably name things in the environment around them and be able to distinguish how people relate with them.

He says from 0 to 3 years, the ideal would be that a child spends most of their time with a parent.

Acknowledging that this is increasingly becoming impossible as parents go out chasing their careers, the alternative would be finding them a suitable kindergarten or day care center.

Currently, the Gender, Labor and Urban Development Ministry is reviewing parental guidelines to among others help parents make such choices as to when or what kind of school they should initially take their child too.

Innocent Byaruhanga, the Assistant Commissioner Family Affairs in the Ministry told URN in an interview that they have recommended to Ministry of Education that children should enroll at least at five years.

Experts say as the ministry remains unclear of what should be taught at kindergarten level even as the Early Policy in the Education Sector was approved in 2007, many nursery teachers are either ill trained or not trained at all to handle children who are at the age of discovering themselves.

According to the guidelines that the National Curriculum Development Center gave to teachers as the ECD policy was being put in place was that for a child aged 3 to 6 years was to use a familiar language for initial literacy and that teachers are supposed to regularly monitor individual learners progress at grasping content and be able to figure out any difficulties.

They argued that at this age children should be taught how to relate with others in an acceptable way, developing and using mathematical concepts in their day to day experiences among others. Both Byaruhanga and Sui say many nursery teachers cannot ably do this.

However, many parents believe that a child should enroll in school by age three. They believe that when a child starts out at this age, they will able to complete primary seven at 12 years. Agnes Eriosi Nantaba, a mother of two says there should not be an age cap as for her the most important thing is to enroll a child at the time when they can ably comprehend basics.

Lillian Birabwa, another parent of three and teacher by profession, says that children should start school at four years. She however, says that if they can ably comprehend what is being taught, they might consider skipping some strands of the three levels of nursery school that is baby, middle and top class.

******

URN