ECE Governance
Early childhood education programs are mostly set up in countries as a way of trying to prepare the children before they get into the elementary school. Every child has the right to education and every country is faced with the challenge of trying to ensure that the children get the best education they deserve. If the ECE program is successfully implemented in a state, the end results are seen to be very beneficial to both the students and the country as a whole.
ECE governance has to keep up with the standards currently in place and try and figure out what’s working for the program and seek a solution for what isn’t.Constant evaluation of the program and its performance would come in handy in ensuring that the needs of the child are met as well as possible. If at all the ECE governance is to be a success, then its structure must go together with the functions of the state (Kagan, 2012). The main purpose behind ECE governance is trying to ensure that all children get the best education in order to perform best in life, the education is accessible and affordable to everyone in the local community and the ECE programs meet the standards that have been set up.
Every day new ECE programs come up which may bring about a lot of confusion and the services rendered to the children may not be up to the standards that would be required. This therefore raises the question about how then does one know that the programs set up are beneficial to the child if there is no official body in the state which are governing these programs?
Governance is nothing like the government which it may be confused with. In governance, there is a collective group of people who together make a major decision pertaining to a particular issue. In the case of ECE governance, the collective body comprises of the parents who get half of the membership and other policy makers who have interests when it comes to early childhood education (Kagan, 2012).
ECE governance is carried out in three phases. Phase one is the programmatic approach. The ECE programs have to meet the standards that have been set up in the state and adhere to them. Additionally, the programs would be constantly monitored over time to review the performance of the programs. The policy council, which was composed of the parents, would have the final decisions on matters involving the programs. The second phase is coordination and collaboration. And phase three is moving towards shared responsibility and accountability. It is not only the parents who have interests invested on the child’s academic performance, but also the public and the government. None will likely succeed without the help of the other thereforethe government, the public and the parents need to work together in order to ensure the child’s success.
Administrative integration can briefly be defined as the extent to which a single administrative body can take full responsibility for early child care and education. It can take three forms; blended administrative integration, the subsumed administrative integration and the stand alone administrative integration. In the blended administrative integration, several agencies are set up and all these agencies take charge of managing ECE efforts, however, there will be one executive office which will be the lead in charge of the other offices that have been set up.
The subsumed administrative integration also referred to as the new unit approach on the other hand is where a new independent agency is set [up which will work to help the main agency dealing with ECE matters. The new agency set up will work to compliment the main ECE agency governing the ECE programs that have been put in place.
Lastly, the stand-alone administrative integration, which is sometimes commonly referred to as the Entirely New State Agency Approach is the state is partially responsible for the ECE programs set up in the state on any matter pertaining to the services and infrastructure that make up the ECE system. This system would be most beneficial to the ECE program as it comes with a lot of services such that go beyond the welfare situations. The government provides a lot to both the parent and the child to ensure that the child receives the best education and services as possible (Gestwicki, 2011).
Over the years with the growth of more and more ECE programs, there has been a need to ensure that the ECE programs set up worked efficiently to meet the needs and requirements of the students. The main issue raised in chapter one which poses the greatest challenge to building authority and accountability into governance entities and in early education and care setting is that both the parents and the policy have no clear understanding of the programs put in place(Feeney, 2009). This becomes a problem because this therefore means that the parents therefore do not have sufficient knowledge on making a decision to determine which program would be best fit for the child and also considering that the parents make up half of the committee which is in charge of all decision making relating to the program this may be seen to be problematic.
The policy makers who are the main investors in the programs also need to understand what value the investment made into the program has on the lives of the child. Therefore, it would be imperative to have the policy makers and parents both educated on the ECE programs in order to ensure effective and efficient running of the programs. Additionally, if the policy investors feel that the investment made is put into good use, this would act as an encouragement to add more investment into the program. Hence, the program can be developed better to suit the needs of the child (Feeney, 2009). Additionally, if the ECE is of high standards it helps cut down on the extra costs that would likely be spent on special education. The
References
Kagan, S. L., & Kauerz, K. (2012). Early childhood systems: Transforming early learning. New York: Teachers College
Gestwicki, C., Bertrand, J., & Gestwicki, C. (2011). Essentials of early childhood education. Toronto: Nelson Education.
Feeney, S., Galper, A., & Seefeldt, C. (2009). Continuing issues in early childhood education. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Merrill/Pearson
