Parents' Awareness Significant to Early Childhood Education

From the researches made, ECCDC said that in general there is lack of appreciation on a child’s early or formative years between infancy to six years as the foundation for human development.

In a seminar workshop recently organized by the agency in Makati City, Planning Officer Bong Gregorio of ECCDC revealed that only 34 percent of three to five year old children are enrolled in center-based ECCD (daycare and pre-school centers).

Gregorio added that the said problem is a result of the uneven distribution of ECCD centers in the country. There are around 50,000 daycare centers in the Philippines, but still the figure is deceiving.

He also noted that wealthier barangays tend to have more than one early learning center, while a lot of poor villages especially in the countryside usually have none at all.

Therefore, 41% of Grade 1 students ultimately drop out, primarily because these children are not yet ready for school, figures from the Department of Education (DepEd) showed.

To address the said problem, ECCDC Executive Director Marlene Manuel Gregorio said that establishing a home- based ECCD (HB-ECCD) can work just as well as center-based ECCD is needed.

The pilot areas include cities of Malabon, Valenzuela and four municipalities in Aurora province (Baler, San Luis, Dipaculao, Maria Aurora).

With HB-ECCD, there is no longer the need to spend money to build additional structures like day care centers since you are at home. The only thing needed is to train and empower parents who will serve as facilitators of HB-ECCD.

EECDC is now working toward promoting and implementing HB-ECCD through a six-month demonstration project. [via ph.news.yahoo.com]