Status and Adequacy of Safety Strategies of Early Childhood Education Centres in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

The study assessed the status and adequacy of safety strategies of early 
childhood education centres in Southwestern Nigeria. These were with 
the view to providing information on the safety of early childhood 
education centres in Southwestern Nigeria. This study adopted a 
descriptive survey research design and the study population consisted of 
all Early Childhood Education (ECE) centres of six Southwestern states 
of Nigeria. The sample for the study consisted of 240 ECE centres, as 
well as 240 parents and 240 teachers in the centres. Multistage 
sampling procedure using Simple Random, Snowball and Accidental 
Sampling techniques were used to select the samples. The study utilised 
School Safety Checklist (SSC). Data were analyzed using simple 
percentages. The results showed that early childhood education centres 
in Southwestern Nigeria were highly safe in disaster prevention (51.7%), 
playground safety (53.3%) and cyber safety (64.6%). They were fairly 
safe in the school buildings (52.5%), water hygiene (15.0%), transport safety (18.3%), health and safety (49.2%) as well as social and emotional safety (41.7%) but not safe in fire safety and management (82.9% did not fulfill fire safety conditions). The results also showed that the safety strategies of 5.4% of the centres were not adequate, 49.6% of the centres were fairly adequate and 45.0% of the centers were very adequate. The study concluded that most of the early childhood education centers in South-western Nigeria had adequate safety strategies.