Abstract

Early childhood education is the lowest level of formal education. It is so demanding that it has become problematic for the government to provide qualitative ones. In other developed and developing nations, communities have been found providing assistance and support for this level of education in terms of provision of human, material, and financial support. An observation of Early Childhood Education provision in Nigeria reveals that it has not been enjoying community participation, particularly in Ibadan South West Local Government area of Oyo State. The government and privately owned schools are almost empty in terms of resources availability despite the fact that there is always Parent-Teacher-Association in most of the schools. This then necessitated the involvement of the communities in which these ECE centres are domiciled. This study therefore, investigated the areas of school practices in which the communities have been participating. The problems facing community participation and how to improve it were also studied. Survey research design of the questionnaire type was adopted. The community leader, head teachers and classroom teachers of ECE centres in the local government area were the population of the study. Multistage sampling techniques were used to select 307 respondents in which 11% were head teachers, 24% were community leaders and 65% were classroom teachers. The results showed that there is community participation only in the area of decision making about ECE while other areas of Early Childhood Education practices lack community participation. Recommendations were proffered based on the findings of the study.