Accreditation of early childhood education programmes in Nigerian higher institutions: Between policy formulation and reality

Abstract

Introduction: Accreditation is the process of certifying academic programmes in institutions of learning. It often involves the comparison of statutory provisions and the reality, sadly in Nigeria, the provision of the statutory documents as regards accreditation is largely at variance with the results of accreditation exercises carried out by the regulatory bodies in charge of accreditation. However, the magical means through which most higher learning academic institutions gain accreditation leaves much to be desired. Purpose: This paper therefore attempted an examination of the provisions of statutory documents as regards accreditation, comparing the provisions of the NUC’s BMAS; NCCE’s minimum standard and accreditation toolkit with the results of the needs committee set up to do on the spot assessment of the Universities on one hand and the NUC’s accreditation results published recently on the other hand. Methods: A short survey was conducted to answer fifteen questions, related to such listed as requirements for accreditation of Early Childhood Education in Colleges of Education. Heads of Departments or their lieutenants, in the Colleges, were asked to fill out the answers to the questions using the Google form platform. The convenience sampling technique was used to select ten public owned colleges of education five-each from the southern and northern parts of Nigeria out of a total of seventy five public owned colleges of education. Results: It was discovered that the accreditation results of the various colleges of education and universities offering early childhood educationmay not be said to be fully a reflection of reality on ground in these colleges of education and universities. Conclusion: This paper therefore postulated based on available information that the accreditation results often published or announcedmay be at variance with the reality in those schools. Academics and other players in the subsector may be culpable alongside the accreditation bodies, at giving non accurate accounts of the true situation of things during the accreditation of programmes, early childhood education inclusive.