From TCNEWS
As part of carrying out its Corporate Social Responsibilities, Sterling bank, through its Education Support outlet, Sterling One Foundation ( SOF) engaged Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All ( CSACEFA) to implement SOF E-CLAP (EARLY CHILD LEARNING ADVANCEMENT PROGRAMME) in Abia State.
SOF E-CLAP, is an Early Child Learning Advancement Programme is focused on the education of children in their first three years in the primary school ( Basic 1 -3).
Speaking during the second phase of the project which will last for 8 Months, from May to December,2024, at Umuola Central School, Aba, which is the pilot school, CSACEFA Team lead/ State Coordinator, Mrs Eunice Egbuna, disclosed that the Programme emphasizes the use of the mother tongue in educating the young ones, with the belief that it helps to impact lasting knowledge on them and help them to learn faster.
Egbuna, who disclosed that the first phase of activity was an advocacy visit to ASUBEB, where CSACEFA representatives introduced the Programme packages to the Executive Secretary and her Directors, pointed out that the programme also focused on employment of new techniques, well tailored technology, application of non formal education curriculum and innovative resources materials in the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy.
According to her, the programme also promotes safe space application in the teaching and learning environments as well as recourse to the rights of the learner.
Her words, “It is an obvious fact that children in the rural areas and in conflict prone environments do not measure up academically for lack of exposure and concentration. Because of that, their first three years in the primary school is punctuated by a lot of struggles to adjust to new environment, which often lead to lack of concentration and difficulty in learning.
“This Programme, therefore, aims at injecting the use of technologies such as audio visual materials , non formal education curriculum and other innovative resource materials to sustain their interest and improve their learning ability in literacy and numeracy
“It is expected that, by the end of the whole exercise a good number of beneficiaries will have been imparted, to the level of being able to show mastery of reading and writing as well as doing better in calculations within their scope in Basic 4 to 6”.
To achieve all these, Egbuna disclosed that teachers of the early grade pupils would be trained to adapt to this new trend.
According to her, they would be monitored after the training, to access how well or otherwise they are doing in application of the learning. The pupils’ learning outcome will also be monitored.
Egbuna and her team who hosted over 70 parents of the early grade children of the school, further sensitized them on the essence of the use of Native Language ( Igbo) in raising their children for better language acquisition and better understanding during teaching and learning in the school environment.
She also notified the parents of the new learning technology and the juxtaposition of formal and non formal curriculum in the school, which aims at helping the children to start early to develop interest in skills of their choice for future use.
Other resource persons who include: Mr Godson Ibekwe-Umelo and Miss Chika Egbuna, enjoined the parents to encourage their children to make maximum use of the rare opportunity by making their homes peaceful, where their children will enjoy free space to practice and revise whatever they have been taught.
They also encouraged the parents to make efforts to befriend their children and make them happy, as according to them, an unhappy child hardly learns for lack of concentration.
They reminded the parents that the outcome of the project would determine its extension to entire Abia schools.
Many Parents who spoke in support of the Programme which was an interactive one, thanked the organizers and the sponsor.