EVALUATION OF THE ADEQUACY OF EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES IN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC EARLY CHILDHOOD AND CARE CENTRES IN PLATEAU STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study evaluated the adequacy of educational facilities in private and public Early Childhood and Care Education (ECCE) centres in Plateau State, Nigeria. The descriptive survey research design was adopted. The population of schools used in the study comprised 933 ECCE schools in 17 Local Government Areas of Plateau State, Nigeria. The population of teachers was 1786 (632 in private and 1154 in public ECCE schools), then, care givers were 660 in number (221 in private and 439 in public ECCE schools).  The sample for the study consisted of 277 ECCE centres  and 1154 teachers (75 from 30 private ECCE schools and 202 teachers from177 public ECCE schools) with 158 care givers (38 from private and 120 from public ECCE schools. The objectives of the study were to determine: the extent to which educational facilities were adequate in private and public ECCE centres in nursery schools in Plateau State and the level of achievement of the objectives of the educational resource centres in nursery schools in Plateau State, Nigeria. Two research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. An instrument, named Evaluation of Early Childhood Care Education Scale (ECCES) with a reliability index 0.78 was used to collect data from the participants. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. Findings from the showed that educational facilities were adequate in public ECCE schools to a moderate extent while it was adequate to a large extent in private ECCE schools in Plateau State, Nigeria. Furthermore, findings showed that the objectives of the educational resource centers  have been achieved.