Government’s Involvement in Safety Management in Public Early Childhood Education Centres (ECECs) in Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined Governments' Involvement in Safety Management in Public Early Childhood Education Centres (ECECs) in Rivers State. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study which adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised of five hundred and ten (510) ECECs in the twenty three (23) Local Government Areas in Rivers State. There were 205 supervisors and 2752 teaching staff of which 510 are head teachers. A sample of 120 ECECs was selected using the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. A total of 1000 respondents was used for the study. A questionnaire titled "Government Involvement in Safety Management in ECECs (GISMQ)"developed by the researchers, was the instrument used for the study. The questionnaire had a face and content validation and a reliability index of 0.80 was established using the Cronbach alpha statistics. The mean and standard deviation were used in answering the research questions while z test was used in testing the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. The findings of the study revealed that the government was not involved in the training and retraining of ECECs staff, maintenance of facilities, provision of adequate fund for ECECs and the use of professionally trained security personnel. These practices could bring to naught all other efforts made at instituting safety management in schools as children become exposed to unnecessary dangers and hazards. It was recommended that provisions of adequate fund for ECECs be made by the government for its effective and smooth operation; Training and retraining of ECECs staff to update their knowledge on issues concerning child care; the use of professionally trained security personnel to beef up school security and maintenance of school facilities to ensure facilities relevance in providing safe school environment.