First international conference on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) |20 February 2017

Seychelles shows the way forward

The three-day international conference on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) came to an end on Saturday after serving as a platform to showcase Seychelles as a model of best practice in the area.

International knowledge and practices in ECCE was also shared, peer learning in ECCE provision and service delivery was promoted and Seychelles was launched as the IBE-Unesco best practice ECCE hub.

The conference was held from February 16 to 18 and the closing ceremony was held at the International Conference Centre (ICCS) on Saturday afternoon in the presence of Vice-President Vincent Meriton, ministers, key officials from various ministries, international experts and partners, among other guests.

In his closing remarks, health and social affairs minister Jean-Paul Adam highlighted the importance of three main points going forward.

Firstly, he noted the significance for more training and research.

“This is common to all countries, the importance of better trained people who are involved in childhood care education as well as putting more emphasis on research that they can base policies on better information and more data,” he said.

Secondly, he highlighted the importance of engagement and coordination which has been the framework for success in Seychelles.

“It’s what allowed us to move forward relatively quickly on ECCE and there is still a long way to go but we’ve managed to move,” he said.

Lastly was the importance of consolidation and institutionalisation of ECCE frameworks.

“It is important to have policies that are anchored with institutions aside from the institute coordinates everything like IECD (Institute of Early Childhood Development) but rather in each sector for example health, the policy from before birth to work with parents that are going to have children so that they understand better in terms of nutrition and so on,” he said.

He said the conference was very enriching and Seychelles was recognised for the very big steps which they have made as a leading country in Africa in terms of ECCE.

“Even worldwide we are getting close to a few European countries. So it has been very good for us to be able to benchmark ourselves through this conference but we also managed to look at other things that we can do, things that we can learn from other countries and some other investments that we can make to further improve our programme,” he said.

Director of the Unesco ‒ International Bureau of Education (IBE) Dr Mmantsetsa Marope said a prominent outcome from the conference was the strengthened collaboration across the countries that met here to exchange experiences.

She said the most powerful outcome is empowerment.

“Another outcome that is even more important is the spirit of ‘we can’ which really comes from Seychelles […] This has been a very profound and deep lesson and deeply appreciated outcome,” she said.

Dr Marope said the last outcome is the new challenges that have been put forward.

“Seychelles now being the best practice hub for ECCE, the bulk of ensuring that this framework is actually implemented and the challenges that the countries have identified are addressed rests more on Seychelles than on the IBE,” she said.

She noted that IBE will continue to provide support to Seychelles.

The chief executive of IECD, Shirley Choppy, said as they are now the best practice hub, more capacity is needed within IECD to be able to maintain a liaison with other countries and collaborate to implement the framework for action.

An agreement was also signed by Designated Minister Macsuzy Mondon and Dr Marope with regard to the contribution of Seychelles in activities which IBE will organise in relation to early childhood development.

The next conference will be held in 2019.