Social media was this week awash with advocacy for children in nursery schools, especially around Kigali. This was sparked by a comment on the popular microblogging platform, Twitter, by a user saying that it was common occurrence to see toddlers sleeping on a school bus early in the morning. This ignited a debate during which it emerged that children as young as three are at times required to report to their respective schools as early as 6am every day. This implies that they will have been forced out of their bed as early as 5am or even before, depending on their proximity from the school. This is a dangerous practices, as experts say that that the early morning sleep that children are deprived of is very important for their proper upbringing, while effects of such practice can have on them, including distaste for school. According to science, the first three years of a child are the most important in their life where at least 80 per cent of the child’s brains grow within the first three years and this is greatly shaped by the environment in which they grow. To address this issue, some of the measures fronted include coming up with a special time table for pre-school and nursery pupils such that they can start school much later than their siblings in upper classes. However, it emerged that this would do little to fix the challenge for many, because the main issue, as it turned out, is logistical; where these children share buses with their older siblings, and separating their time of commute may be difficult or have much higher cost implications on both schools and parents. A much-more feasible solution would be having nursery schools as close to home as possible to avoid long commute for the children. This can be done in a multipronged fashion and requires both public and private investment. On the public side, there is already work in progress where a policy in place for Early Childhood Development (ECD) has a target to have at least two model ECD centres in every cell of every sector in the country. This drive can be supplemented by having incentives for private players to venture into this sector, to ensure parents get quality schools near them to cut down the commute. This would however requires mindset change on the part of parents, to give a chance to these new facilities close to home instead of taking their children in far-flung schools.
