Africa-Press – Lesotho. The Network of Early Childhood Development of Lesotho (NECDoL) has urged Principal Chiefs to intervene in early childhood education from their respective communities in
order to grow early childhood development. Speaking at the meeting with Principal Chiefs, NECDoL Coordinator Shoeshoe Mofokeng indicated that all the Chiefs that take responsibility in all levels of education play a vital role.
She urged the Principal Chiefs to be front liners in encouraging community school readiness – pre-schools – to be registered, asking them to allocate sites for
construction of community schools as an initiative of developing early childhood education. “The Principal Chiefs should review report of programmes and interventions implemented in their districts to ensure
sustainability of projects. Also the principal chiefs should assist the government in influencing chiefs to ensure there are registered community Early Childhood
Care Development (ECCD) centres in all villages which will contribute towards increasing access to pre-primary education,” she enlightened. She stated that school readiness
initiative’s overall goal is to secure a good start into primary education for vulnerable children through access to quality reception classes. She added that
in line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.2, the foundation focuses on ensuring that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development and pre-primary education so that they are ready for
primary education. She said it uses an Early Learning Kiosk, which is an offline tablet with several tools and apps to capacitate teachers in early childhood education.
According to Mofokeng the network’s visionis that by 2030, every child in Lesotho from 0 to 5 years old shall have equitable access to well-coordinated quality integrated early childhood services.
And that the network intends to coordinate partners, stakeholders, programs and initiatives aimed at holistic development of children from 0 to 5 years old at national
level through research, informed advocacy, resource mobilization, capacity building, partnerships, innovation, monitoring and evaluation of Early Childhood
Development (ECD) services and programs to improve the well-being of children in their early years of life. She stated that as the network will be implementing or
intervening in five districts of Lesotho, NECDoL has selected the following districts according to their special needs; Leribe has factory outlets thus
more care centres are likely to multiply, Maseru also has high demand of care centres due to factories, Mafeteng is a pilot district for school readiness initiative, Mohales’hoek is next to Quthing
district which has poorest child indicators and many people from Quthing come to this district to access quality education and Quthing has the lowest child
indicators in the country including poorest education at all levels,” Mofokeng informed. Likhoele Principal Chief Leshoboro Seeiso was amused by the idea, although he said it is quite difficult recently for them to allocate
or provide sites since community counselors have taken over that authority. “They should have been invited to this important meeting so that we could all come up with the solutions, I hope next time all relevant stakeholders will be invited,” Seeiso stated.
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