Administration of Early Childhood Care Education Centers in Post COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for New Policies on Emerging Health Issues (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The study was to investigate the impact of covid-19 pandemic lockdown and practices towards stemming the tide its major outbreak in early childhood care education centers (ECCE) in Nigeria. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study is to find out quality assurance measures adopted to mitigate impact of covid-19 pandemic in administration of ECCE centers in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State, Nigeria. METHODS The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study was made up of 823 personnel consisting of 125 ECCE center administrators and 698 caregivers. The sample for the study was 329 respondents made up of 50 administrators and 279 caregivers. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to select 40% of each category of populations from 50 ECCE centers. Three research questions were posed for the study using mean scores and standard deviation while one hypothesis was formulated to guide the study and tested using t-test statistics at 0.05 level of significance. Instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled: Covid-19pandemic Impact in Administration of Early Childhood Care and Education Centers Questionnaire (COPIAECCEQ). The instrument was validated by three experts. Cronbach Alpha was used to test the internal consistency of the instrument which established a reliability coefficient with an overall reliability of 0.82. RESULTS The findings of the study revealed that there were not enough measures put in place by ECCE centers administrator to check the spread of covid-19. CONCLUSIONS Government intervention support scheme to education during a global health crisis will help to mitigate the negative impact on the learners and learning experience.