NCDC Starts Review of Early Childhood Development Learning Framework

Mukono, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT|  The National Curriculum Development Centre-NCDC has started reviewing the early childhood development (ECD) learning framework.

The review started on Thursday with a consultative meeting at Collin Hotel Mukono. NCDC had spent eighteen years without revisiting the framework.

The current ECD framework for children between the ages of three to six years was developed in 2005. Being a policy document, the framework must be reviewed every five years.

Dr. Deborah Kyazze Magera, the Manager for Early Childhood Care and Education at NCDC says the current learning framework has outlived its relevance in guiding learning in early years.

The current framework has five areas and the one under formation has been improved to seven and will be operationalized next year.  The five areas include acceptably relating with others, interacting, exploring knowledge, and using my environment.

The third area is taking care of oneself for proper growth, developing and using mathematical concepts in day-to-day experience as well as developing and using my language appropriately.

Dr. Magara says in the new framework, they have added areas of expressing and appreciating myself and my culture and then the area of digital integration to catch up with digital skills.

The Assistant Commissioner in Charge of Pre-Primary Education at the Ministry of Education and Sports, Elizabeth Mbatudde says the current framework was designed to teach facts and experiences, yet now we need children to construct their knowledge.

“In practice, lessons given to learners are highly academic-oriented with children overburdened with regular testing but with limited pedagogical direction from the framework. The latter dictates the use of play methodology that helps to foster creativity and imagination.”

Harriet Kyakuha, the Early Childhood Development Technical Advisor at Plan International, a development and humanitarian organization funding the new learning framework says it is important to rethink the learning areas afresh, introduce emerging areas, define new competencies, and provide content in a simplified version.

She says the new approaches must take care of emerging content and competencies as well as global trends.

Plan International started with funding the Needs Assessment Study across the country to determine the gaps and challenges requiring review in the current framework. The organization also runs 150 ECD institutions across the country where they employ over 3,000 ECD educators.

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URN