Paper-Early childhood education in Uganda and Rwanda. Different policies and different achievements
Introduction: Countries tend to adopt similar policies due to several reasons that include having same funders and same advisors. This paper examines policies, inputs and outcomes for early childhood education in Uganda and Rwanda.
Methods: Record and document review has been carried out to get the statistics on early childhood education. Internet search was limited to primary and pre-primary education. Input Indicators explored included public expenditure per primary school pupil, pupil teacher ratio and trained teachers. Outcome indicators included enrollment in primary school, primary education completion rate and duration in school. The difference in values of outcome indicators between the two countries was computed and discussed against policies initiated and inputs made.
Results: Both countries initiated early childhood policies, teacher and vocational training policies, teacher training development and management policy, special needs education policy, social health policy and girls' education policies. Universal Primary and secondary education were introduced in both countries in almost the same period. Both countries spend almost the same amount of money per student for primary education; allocate same proportion of GDP to primary education and the proportion of trained teachers in primary schools is nearly the same. Like the inputs into the primary education, the outcomes have been nearly the same. Female enrolment is around 50% in countries, literacy rate, school life expectancy, pre-primary enrollment and primary enrollment are all nearly the same.
Conclusion: Similar Inputs into early childhood education in different countries can yield nearly similar results. Further research in several other countries is needed to confirm similar relationship at a wider scale.