Effect of Early Childhood Education on Pupils’ Readiness for Learning in Public Primary one School in Rwanda

Abstract

The effective provision of early childhood education to children plays a significant role in readiness in primary school which also creates a high rate of adaptation. This paper therefore determined the effect of early childhood education on pupils’ readiness in public primary schools (primary one) in Gasabo district in Rwanda. The target population was 270 respondents that provided the sample size of 162. The study used Yamane formula to get the sample size. Interview guide and questionnaire were used as data collection instruments. Correlation research design was employed and IBM/SPSS version 21 was used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that early childhood education influence pupils’ readiness at 64.9 percent of R- square. It was noted that teaching and learning resources, teachers’ qualification, numeracy development and language development can improve pupils’ readiness for learning. It was also indicated that, every increase on teaching qualification and pupils’ readiness for learning increases at 104.3 percent. The study recommended that the ministry of education ought to provide early childhood education facilities in all public primary schools in order to improve pupils' readiness for learning. Educational designers should make effective set up that should boost pupils' readiness for learning so as to make up effective implementation of early childhood education factors in public primary schools. The head teachers should supervise the implementation of early childhood education daily so that pupils' readiness for learning in primary one can be improved through developing test scores, attitudes towards learning and pupils' retention as well as reducing repetition rate.

Keywords: Early Childhood Education, Early childhood Development, Primary education Pupil’ readiness, Rwanda