NONE of the island’s approximately 2,600 early childhood institutions have been registered with the Early Childhood Commission (ECC), four years after the government moved to establish national standards for their operation.

Speaking at the most recent Monday Exchange held at the Observer’s Kingston office, Manager of Development Services at the Early Childhood Commission (ECC), Richard Williams, disclosed that just over 900 institutions have been granted provisional permits to operate, but none have actually been registered.

While these temporary permits allow the facilities to be inspected by the ECC, they also mean that none of the 2,600 facilities meet the agency’s current operating standards.

Williams said 2,554 institutions have applied for registration to date. However, getting these schools to complete the application process and provide the required documented information is proving an uphill task for the commission.

In order to be certified, each applicant who operates or owns an early childhood facility must provide two passport-sized photographs, along with references; a food handler’s permit; clean police records and medical certificates for each of their employees. Additionally, the owner/operators must provide job descriptions for each of their employees and their terms of employment; plus a safety report from the Jamaica Fire Brigade and Public Health Department.

Each institution needs to satisfactorily meet the 12 standards set by the ECC, which speak to staffing, programmes, behaviour management, physical environment, equipment and furnishing, health, nutrition, safety, child rights, child protection and equality, parent and stakeholder participation, as well as administration and finance.

However, in the four years since the registration drive began, the ECC has found itself struggling through the tedious and involved process of registering all these facilities.

A major issue, Williams said, continues to be getting public health and fire certification for the applicants’ facilities. This is only given after a thorough inspection by the Jamaica Fire Services and the Public Health Department. Lengthy delays in the provision of these documents by the applicants has drawn out the process.

“A number of institutions may not be able to get these inspections, and, if they are inspected they are not meeting the satisfactory requirement based on what the fire and public health department want,” he said.

Dr Rebecca Tortello, senior advisor to the Minister of Education, hastened to add that in many cases, inspections are delayed due to a lack of resources within the fire and public health departments.

“They have asked for the fire inspection, they have asked for the public health inspection but they are waiting for those inspectors to come, and the ECC needs all those documents…,” she told the team of Observer reporters and editors.

Another challenge, according to Willliams, is that the ECC has found itself having to await police reports for a number of persons employed within early childhood institutions, who have had minor convictions. Although these convictions can be expunged, he said, this slows down the application process for the ECC, as it will not issue permits to operate if the operators of the institution have a police record.

Dr Tortello said while the agency awaits the completion of the applications process and even without having all the requisite documents, in the interest of time, the ECC has had to start sending in their inspectors to these facilities to look at the quality of the teachers, their training background and to observe the classes.

She noted that this process is time-consuming, especially with only 35 inspectors in the ECC, and the task of verifying that all the nation’s early childhood institutions are up to par, is far from simple.

“You have to review all the applications. You have to manually go and inspect and then you have to write up inspections and then it has to be reviewed again. It is not as straightforward as it sounds.”

She also points out that traditionally, in Jamaica, these early childhood institutions have always been community-based with several facilities springing up in a single neighbourhood. Dr Tortello noted that this makes it difficult to keep tabs on all of them.

“We are trying to get a handle on it and trying to support it, and give it the priority attention it deserves, given what we know about how young children learn and develop,” she said.

Meanwhile, schools that have not been registered are given time to comply with the requirements of the ECC.

“When an inspection is done, based on the different areas of concern, you might get three months, six months or a year to improve,” Williams said.

Early childhood institutions cater to children up to eight years old.

Benefits to be derived from being registered include access to development information, constant assessment and advice, and training in the seven areas of early childhood safety.