Convened at Bangalore’s state-of-the-art ITC Gardenia Hotel on January 23, the 6th EW ECE Global Conference 2016 featured international and national ECCE experts who shared their knowledge and best practices with over 250 promoters, principals and teachers of top-ranked pre-primaries and K-12 schools from across the country:  Summiya Yasmeen 

For the sixth year consecutively, EducationWorld hosted its annual Early Childhood Education Global Conference to draw government and public attention to the critical importance of providing professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) to all of India’s 158 million children in the 0-5 age group. Convened at Bangalore’s state-of-the-art ITC Gardenia Hotel on January 23, the 6th EW Early Childhood Education Global Conference 2016 featured international and national ECCE experts who shared their knowledge and best practices with over 250 promoters, principals and teachers of top-ranked pre-primaries and K-12 schools from across the country.

Welcoming the speakers and delegates who filled the massive conference hall of ITC Gardenia to full capacity, Dilip Thakore, publisher-editor of EducationWorld (estb.1999), proclaimed this publication as “India’s foremost champion” of high quality ECCE for all children in the 0-5 age group. “We are dedicated to the cause of universalisation of ECCE because it’s impossible to adequately develop the country’s human capital on weak foundations,” said Thakore, lamenting that in the Union Budget 2015-16 the BJP/NDA government at the Centre had slashed its allocation for ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) which funds the country’s 1.6 million anganwadis — early childhood care and nutrition centres — by 50 percent.

The conference was sponsored by Navneet Education, Asian International College India, Popcorn Furniture, Furtados School of Music and Afairs Media & Exhibitions.

The day-long event featured two keynote addresses and panel discussions. The first keynote ‘The legacy of Maria Montessori’ was delivered by Nan Civel, an alumna of the Maria Montessori Training Organisation, UK and founder of The Children’s House, a group of preschools in Malaysia. The second keynote ‘Towards Quality in ECE: Processes and Challenges’ was presented by Dr. Adarsh Sharma, country coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood, former director of the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development and a well-known Delhi-based ECCE consultant.

Moreover with several state governments, including Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, having legislated tuition fee and administrative regulations for private preschools hitherto free of the heavy hand of government, the first panel discussion debated ‘Government should not regulate private preschools’. Knowledgeable panelists included Swati Popat Vats, founder-president of the Early Childhood Association of India; Jaya Sastri, founder-director of SEED group of preschools, Chennai; Dr. Padmini, trustee of the Child Rights Trust, Bangalore; and Kavita Anand, founder-director of Adhyayan Quality Education Services Pvt. Ltd, Mumbai.

The second panel comprising Dr. Shailaja Menon, professor at the School of Education, Azim Premji University, Bangalore; Deepa Bhushan, head of Billabong High International schools; Hazel Siromoni, director of Maple Bear India; and keynote presenters Nan Civel and Dr. Adarsh Sharma, deliberated on whether ‘We need to set minimum learning outcomes in ECCE’.

The keynote addresses and panel discussions provoked enthusiastic audience participation during generous 30-minute Q&A sessions, with delegates simultaneously tweeting questions and comments on the twitter hash tag #ewece. To add variety to the day’s agenda, pre-primaries from ten cities countrywide, which topped the EW India Preschool Rankings 2015 (see EW December 2015), were presented trophies and awards (see p.92).

To enable delegates to acquire fresh insights into latest global practices in ECCE, an Educators Workshop was conducted on the day preceding the conference by faculty of the Singapore-based Asian International College, a constituent of the highly-respected UK-based Busy Bees early years education group. AIC’s breakaway tutorial sessions — ‘Right time, right strategy: The importance of observation in ECCE settings’; ‘Developing a personal learning network for professional development’; ‘The art of effective parent communication’ and ‘A Hackathon on strategies for attracting and retaining teachers’ — attracted participation of over 100 ECCE professionals from India’s top-ranked preschools.

In the pages following, we present abbreviated versions of the keynote addresses and panel discussions of the EW Early Childhood Education Global Conference 2016.