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 descriptivesurvey 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 headteachers. A sample of 120 ECECs was selected using the proportionate stratified random sampling technique. A totalof 1000 respondents was used for the study. A questionnaire titled “Government Involvement in Safety Managementin ECECs (GISMQ)”developed by the researchers, was the instrument used for the study. The questionnaire had aface and content validation and a reliability index of 0.80 was established using the Cronbach alpha statistics. Themean and standard deviation were used in answering the research questions while z test was used in testing thehypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. The findings of the study revealed that the government was not involved in thetraining and retraining of ECECs staff, maintenance of facilities, provision of adequate fund for ECECs and the useof professionally trained security personnel. These practices could bring to naught all other efforts made at institutingsafety management in schools as children become exposed to unnecessary dangers and hazards. It was recommendedthat 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 ofprofessionally trained security personnel to beef up school security and maintenance of school facilities to ensurefacilities relevance in providing safe school environment.