International Journal of Advanced Research and Development

Authors
Bosah Ifeoma Patience, Ejesi Nkoli Stela, Aleke Doris Ifeoma

Abstract
The benefits of preschool education to children depend on the quality of learning offered by these centres. For quality improvement and accessibility to all children, the federal government gave directive to the ministry of education to attach ECC Centres to all existing primary schools in the country. The extent to which the ministry of education has carried out this new policy and the extent of public ECCCentres compliance to the federal government minimum standard of establishment is the challenge that faced this study. This is with the view of coming up with recommendations that will help to better the conditions and quality of preschool education in Nigeria and the world at large. The study made use of descriptive survey design. Nnewi south local government area has 67 public primary schools out of which 58 has ECCC attached to it. A purposive sampling technique was used to select sixteen (16) public primary schools from the 58public primary schools with preschool centers as the sample population. Their 16 head teachers and 22 preschool class teachers formed the respondents. The instrument used for collection of data was a check liste drafted by the researchers from the federal government national minimum standard for E CCC in Nigeria which serves as the bench mark for the study. The checklist has five sub headings to cover the five research questions that guided the study. The instrument was properly validated by experts. The study discovered that not all the primary schools in Nnewi south have early child care centres attached to them and that the standard of the early child care centers did not measure up in all areas tested to the expected standard in the federal government national minimum standard for ECCC. In line with the findings, the researchers recommended among others that the ministry of education must ensure that all the primary schools in the state have ECCC attached to them as directed by federal government of Nigeria and that federal government should provide adequate age appropriate facilities to the ECC centres to improve the quality of learning outcomes in these centers