EVALUATION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NATIONAL POLICY ON PRE-PRIMARY EDUCATION IN ENUGU STATE

ABSTRACT

The study was conducted to evaluate the implementation of the National Policy on Pre-primary Education in Enugu state. Three research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. Multistage sampling technique was used to select one hundred public pre-primary schools and three hundred nursery school teachers. The instruments for data collection consisted of direct data observation/rating scale, check list and a questionnaire entitled Evaluation of the National Policy on Pre-primary Education (ENPPE) developed by the researcher. The instruments were face validated by three experts, two from the area of Childhood Education and one from Measurement and Evaluation. The data generated from trial testing were analysed using Cronbach Alpha statistics and the overall reliability of 0.77 was obtained. Mean and Standard Deviation were used to answer the research questions while the null hypotheses were tested using t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that specialist teachers are available in the pre-primary school to a little extent. The curriculum component as well as government responsibilities in the nursery schools as contained in the National Policy on Education were implemented to a little extent. Based on the findings, some recommendations were made which included: the government should promote the training of specialist teachers for the pre-primary schools; should ensure that every school should have National Policy on Education and approved government curriculum, the module for the nursery schools should be provided. The government should implement the stipulated responsibilities in the nursery schools and should persuade both the Parent’s Teacher’s Association and the communities to fund nursery education