Low-fee private preschools as the symbol of imagined ‘modernity’? – Parental perspectives on early childhood care and education (ECCE) in an urban informal settlement in Zambia

Taeko Okitsu, D. Brent Edwards, Peggy Mwanza and Scott Miller

International Journal of Educational Development, 2023, vol. 97, issue C

Abstract: This paper explores (1) the public and private options available at the ECCE level, (2) parents’ expectation for ECCE, and (3) preferred and actual choice of preschools in an urban informal settlement in Zambia. The findings reveal strong demand for ECCE among the urban poor. This demand overwhelms low-fee private (LFP) preschool options due both to an insufficient number of public preschools as well as parents’ relative preference for the LFP options. Typically, LFP preschools offer highly academic oriented curriculum with English as a medium of instruction, divergent from the government’s play-based and mother-tongue based curriculum. By adopting critical cultural political economy approach as an analytical framework, we found that urban poor parents increasingly view investing in LFP preschools as an important household strategy to ‘transform’ their children into ‘modern’ citizens, eventually exiting from their stigmatized lifestyle and marginalized social status.

Keywords: Low-fee private school (LFPS); Preschools; Modernity; Critical cultural political economy; Urban informal settlements in Zambia; Early childhood care and education (ECCE) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:97:y:2023:i:c:s0738059322001730

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102723

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