KEYNOTE ADDRESS: ADARSH SHARMA

Towards quality in ECCE: Processes & challenges

The first six years of life are widely acknowledged as a “window of opportunity” for optimising the development of children and realising their inherent potential. This is the period in a child’s life when she records the fastest pace of growth. Research in the neurosciences has identified these years as a critical period for development of the brain and its structures.

With rising awareness of the critical importance of early years, more and more governments around the world are making provision for early childhood care and education (ECCE) of youngest children. According to Lawrence Schweinhart, president of the Ypsilanti, Michigan-based High Scope Educational Research Foundation, the economic returns from public investment in high- quality ECCE can be as high as 16 times of outlays.

The population of children under the age of six in India is 160 million with the number of 3-6 year olds who need pre-primary education aggregating 73 million. This is a huge number and as per rough estimates, only 40-42 percent of children are provided some type of early childhood education by public, private and NGO preschools. Quite rightly, public/government programmes are targeted at disadvantaged and marginalised communities, with the Union ministry of women and child development overseeing childcare services for the age group 0-6 years at the national level. Its flagship programme — Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) — has a wide network of 1.6 million anganwadis countrywide which are focal points for delivering services at the community level. Anganwadis provide a package of services that include health and nutrition for children and pregnant and lactating mothers, together with preschool education for 3-6 year olds.

Although under the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, children under the age of six are outside the scope of the “basic right to education,” s.11 of the RTE Act acknowledges the importance of ECCE. “With a view to prepare children above the age of three years for elementary education and to provide early childhood care and education for all children until they complete the age of six years, the government may make necessary arrangements for providing free preschool education for such children,” it says. As a follow-up, the government has been working to set up a one-year ECCE exposure intervention programme in government-run schools to discharge its obligation towards children aged 3-6 years. However, this programme is being run only in a few states on an experimental basis.

Undoubtedly, making ECCE provision for over 160 million children under the age of six by the state is a daunting task. Consequently, private edupreneurs have become active players in this segment for elite and middle class households. Foreign ECCE providers have also set up chains of franchised preschools in big towns and metropolitan cities to meet the burgeoning demands of aspirational middle class parents. Although exact numbers are not available, rough estimates indicate that 22-30 percent preschoolers are in private preschools.

Nevertheless there’s no denying that on the whole, the quality of ECCE for children below three and early childhood education to children in the 3-6 age group is substandard because of poor access, non-availability of standards, curriculum framework and limited number of trained childcare service providers. Moreover, there are no regulatory mechanisms or accreditation bodies at the national level and teacher training colleges tend to ignore ECCE. Without a legal framework related to teacher training, there is wide variation in the type of training ECE teachers receive. The average anganwadi teacher gets only four days of preschool orientation in pre-service training of one month duration.

A positive development is that somewhat belatedly, in 2013 the Central government cleared a National Early Childhood Care and Education Policy. But three years later, progress has been tardy in implementing the policy with state governments showing little interest in setting up state councils for ECCE.

Regrettably, private pre-primary education providers haven’t welcomed the idea of government regulation. The justification given is that government does not have the expertise, and the regulatory system proposed won’t be able to cope with assessment of the huge private sector, in addition to anganwadis. However, it’s undeniable that private preschool education is characterised by wide quality variations with some providing what is accurately described as mis-education. Therefore it’s in the interest of the majority of youngest children that an effective regulatory mechanism is in place soon. Indeed, private preschool networks such as the Early Childhood Association should support the government in this task.

The first few years of every child’s life are deeply formative. Therefore smart and effective policy intervention can have a lasting impact. Let us ensure we buttress support to youngest children in their formative early years. All children have the right to professionally administered ECCE to get a good start in life. We owe our youngest children the best to enable them to realise their full potential.

(Dr. Adarsh Sharma is a well-known Delhi-based ECCE consultant and former director of NIPCCD, Delhi)