NUT Wants Early Childhood Education Fully Integrated Into Public Primary Schools — Calls It Nigeria’s ‘Most Neglected’ Level

The Nigeria Union of Teachers has called for Early Childhood Education to be properly integrated into public primary schools, arguing that the level where children build their first formal learning habits remains one of the weakest parts of Nigeria’s education system.

NUT National President Audu Titus Amba raised the issue at the union’s 59th National Conference of Delegates in Enugu, where teachers from across the country were reviewing the condition of the profession and the wider school system.

The union’s position puts early childhood education Nigeria back into a policy debate that is often dominated by WAEC results, university admissions, teacher salaries and secondary-school reform. Yet the learning foundations developed before and during the first years of primary education influence literacy, numeracy, behaviour and readiness for everything that follows.

Why ECE Integration Matters for Public Primary Schools

Many public primary schools already have some form of Early Childhood Care and Development or pre-primary provision, but availability, staffing, facilities and quality vary widely. In some communities, children begin formal schooling without structured early-years exposure, while private nursery education may be inaccessible to lower-income families.

Proper integration means more than attaching a nursery class to a primary school. Early-years learners require age-appropriate teaching, play-based and activity-based learning, suitable furniture, safe toilets, child-friendly spaces, appropriate teacher-pupil ratios and educators who understand early-childhood development.

A four-year-old should not simply be placed in a smaller version of a Primary Four classroom. Teaching methods that rely heavily on copying notes, long periods of sitting still or memorising material without exploration can be poorly matched to how young children learn.

The NUT says the sub-sector has been neglected despite its importance as the foundation of learning. That concern is consistent with the broader challenge facing public basic education: infrastructure and staffing interventions often focus on the visible needs of older pupils while early-years provision receives less attention.

For head teachers, stronger ECE integration would also create management responsibilities. Schools would need to plan transition from early years into Primary One, monitor developmental progress, engage parents, provide safe play environments and ensure that staff working with very young children meet appropriate professional standards.

The ECE Demand Came With a Wider List of Teacher Concerns

The NUT conference was not focused on early-childhood education alone. Amba also called on states and the FCT to fully implement the Harmonised Retirement Age for Teachers Act, which increased the retirement age from 60 to 65 years and qualifying service from 35 to 40 years, whichever comes first.

The union says some governments have introduced local guidelines that do not fully reflect the federal law and wants eligible teachers to receive the protection intended by the Act.

Teacher welfare was another major concern. NUT is asking governments to implement approved incentives including the special salary structure, bursaries, pension provisions, career-path policies, housing support and loan facilities.

The union also identified teacher shortages, poor remuneration, dilapidated infrastructure, inadequate instructional materials, limited professional development, underfunding, insecurity, weak implementation of education policies and the digital divide among the pressures affecting schools.

Security remains particularly serious. NUT says attacks, abductions and killings involving teachers and pupils have damaged confidence in the school environment and wants governments to strengthen school protection and fully implement safe-school measures.

The conference itself was organised around another major question facing the profession: whether technology and artificial intelligence will erode teachers’ place in the classroom. The emerging position from education leaders at the meeting was that technology should strengthen teachers rather than replace the human role of mentoring, judgement and classroom relationships.

The push for early childhood education Nigeria therefore sits inside a much larger argument about what a functioning education system requires. Better early-years provision cannot succeed without enough teachers, appropriate training, safe schools, usable infrastructure and a profession capable of attracting and retaining skilled people.

For primary-school heads, the most immediate question is practical: does the early-years section of the school receive the same seriousness given to examination classes, or is it treated as an optional extension of the primary school? NUT’s latest demand suggests that policymakers may increasingly be forced to answer the same question.