Grant the focus back on Early Childhood education

Synopsis: Early Childhood Education (ECE) is vital for a child’s overall development and growth.

Introduction

ECE is crucial to the overall development of children, as it impacts their learning and even earning capabilities throughout their lifetimes. In India, for the vast majority of the poor, ECE is provided through 14 lakh anganwadis spread across the country.

What are the challenges associated with the ECE?

Poor availability of teachers and consequent loss of interest in learning from the side of students.

Low parental engagement with Children: Parents do not prioritize ECE enough, as was revealed by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. It states that 45% of the 650+ households surveyed in urban Maharashtra reported that they prioritize their older child’s education over ECE.

Why parental engagement is low in ECE?

The socioeconomic background of households determines access to preschools and the ability to invest in ECE.

Poor households often have parents working overtime to make economic ends meet, consequently, ECE gets ignored out of economic compulsion.

What can be done to overcome these barriers?

The government can take many short-term and effective measures as envisaged in the NEP 2020. (The NEP envisages a greater parental engagement and talks about a changed mindset).

A decentralized approach, with teachers at the heart of the ECE initiative, can yield better results.

The E-paatshala programme in Balwadis and Akanksha schools in Mumbai and Pune were able to demonstrate financial support to parents can yield higher levels of parental engagement with Children. So, there is a need to empower households economically.

Source: This post is based on the article “Grant the focus back on Early Childhood education” published in The Hindu on 29th October 2021.