Factors Influencing Participation in Early Childhood Education: Its Implication to Quality-Education

The study aimed to investigate factors influencing participation in pre-school education and its implications for quality-education. The descriptive survey research design was employed through stratified random sampling to collect pertinent information through questionnaires and observational checklists. The first finding was that 68.92% of the total variance of the factors contributed to quality pre-school education was the site of the preschools, lack of enough spaces for children practices, poor instructional materials in kind and amount, and poor availability of curriculum materials to each child in the classroom. The second finding was that most teaching materials and curriculum contents (83%) were not from indigenous sources. Finally, large class sizes, high teacher-child ratio, low staff salaries, lack of well-trained staff, poor relevance of curriculum, and lack of parental involvement were found to be the major influencing factors affecting preschools' quality-education. Therefore, policymakers should be clear with the aims of pre-school education.