United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Enugu Field Office, in collaboration with Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board (ENSUBEB), is organising a four-day intensive training on “playful parental engagement in early childhood education” in three local government areas of Enugu State.
The three Local government areas selected from the 17 local governments of the state for the programme are Aninri, Igbo-Etiti and Isi-Uzo.
Speaking to BusinessDay after the training in Aninri, Benjamin Ugwuanyi, UNICEF desk officer in ENSUBEB, said that the three local governments were selected because they are UNICEF Focal LGAs in Enugu State and that there are poor learning outcomes in those LGAs.
The programme, he said was targeted at parents, community leaders, teachers, among others, on their roles and responsibilities towards their children after school.
“What should be their roles at home to compliment teachers’ effort in school for a good upbringing and education of the children from their early stage of education,” he said.
According to Ugwuanyi, the programme was newly introduced and tagged, ‘Playful parental engagement in early childhood education.”
He commended UNICEF for supporting ENSUBEB in many programmes, saying that the support UNICEF gave in this particular programme would cover the three local governments.
“We chose the LGAs because these are the under-developed, rural societies, and UNICEF loves reaching out to those that are in hard-to-reach areas,” he said, pointing out that the programme would promote gender equality.
Earlier, Andy Nwani, the desk officer, Early Child Care Development Education, (ECCDE) in charge of Enugu State Basic Education Board, said that the programme was mainly for parents.
“It was observed that most times, parents are distanced from their children; they get themselves pre-occupied in their work and pay less attention to their children and UNICEF decided to bring them in to get them to know that indeed the training and upbringing of their children should not be only for the teachers in the school, this is the reason for the meeting,” he said.
Parental engagement, he said means to “introduce the parents on what should be their role and responsibilities towards their children in assisting the teachers in doing what the teachers do at school and when the children get home they would not be distanced from their parents.”
According to him, “The parents should complement what the teachers had done in school to bring holistic training and upbringing of the children. That is the basic essence of this programme, and we are privileged to have highly scholastic facilitators. We are thankful to UNICEF, and we hope that they would not discontinue.”
He further said that they selected 40 participants from various communities, including the community leaders to the workshop hoping that they would be used as instruments of change in their various communities.
“We selected them using the method of six teachers in different schools to bring five parents whose children are in their class; so, that made us to have about 30 parents, then the community leader, the youth leader, the women leader from the community. If you sum them up, you will get 40 because we included the desk officer in charge of Aniniri and the education secretary in charge of Aniniri.”
Obeta Amaka, Desk officer UNICEF in Enugu State Ministry of Education, said that the programme would go a long way in benefiting the children, the parents and even the teachers.
“This parental engagement which means engaging our parents to our children’s education specially at the formative age, will make the thinking of the children smart and articulate all the time they think outside the box. We noticed that parents are not very close to their children especially the fathers, but with the introduction of this, the narrative will change the objective is that it makes you to be closer to your child. So that when the child grows the bond will always be there. It benefits the child, the parents, the teacher and the community at large because to a large extent crime will be reduced.”
Christagonus Nweke, one of the resource persons, said that in the past when parents sent their children to school they thought they had finished with the children. So, whatever happened after school was none of the parents’ concern, but with this programme on board, we want to rewrite the narrative.
“We are looking at situations or where a child will have a continuous learning. Learning that will continue from school, that is why the programme was introduced. You know that children learn through play and the only work that children do is to play; if purposeful play is organised for children at home, it reinforces and strengthens whatever they learn in school. So, that is the purpose of this training to re-inforce what children do at school in the company of the parents. It is about parental involvement in the teaching,” Nweke said.
He also said that the programme would have a lot of impact on the society, ranging from the bond between parents and children, development of family norms, impact the right morals and to reduce a lot of decadence in society.
In the educational system he said it would help because parents are now involved directly and indirectly in the teaching of their children.
One of the participants who spoke on behalf of others, a community leader and Chairman School Board Management, Aniniri, Godwin Agu, thanked UNICEF and ENSUBEB for organising such a programme he described as wonderful to assist early education of the children. He said that he will be a canverser of the programme in all the communities.
