Early Childhood Education/ICDS
Besides implementation, the process of monitoring and evaluating of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) also suffers from serious drawbacks. Notably, there is lack of timely and effective feedback from higher to lower levels, large amount of paperwork at all levels, and finally, the failure to establish a link between costs and benefits. Further, there is a danger of indiscriminate expansion of the scheme without addressing its qualitative aspects. There is a need to revise existing evaluation techniques used by the government to assess schemes like ICDS and such exercises could prove reliable if carried out by agencies independent of government. The ICDS is such a scheme. It is a national level scheme of the government of India providing a package of services to children below six years and to pregnant and nursing mothers, such as supplementary nutrition, immunisation, health check-ups, referral services and pre-primary education. The scheme now covers almost all districts in the country; however this does not mean that all children below si x years from poorer sections of society are covered by the scheme. There are still large areas left uncovered, especially in less densely populated areas or where population is more scattered and in 'undeclared' slums...- Integrated Child Development Services A Critique of Evaluation Techniques, Vandana Khullar, Economic & Political Weekly, 07/03/1998, /eldoc/n00_/07mar98EPW.pdf
Government School NGO initiatives Early
Childhood Education
...a group of people decided to strengthen the hands of the
government.
While education was the responsibility of the government and was to
remain
so, it was felt that the onus should fall on as many sectors as
possible.
Explains Madhav Chavan, scientist and social worker and the founder
ex-ecuting
secretary of the organisation, "You cannot talk about an industrial
leap
without taking cog-nisance of the fact that a solid foundation of
elementary
educa-tion is imperative for it to be sus-tainable". The energy and
training
of the social workers, of course, would be tapped but industry was also
brought in so that education could become a mainstream agenda and not
an
isolated area of work.
And that was how the Bombay Education Initiative or Pratham came into
being. Started in 1994 by UNICEF, Municipal Corporation of Greater
Mumbai,
(MCGM) and several prominent individuals, the aim of the unit was to
bring
about a universalisation of primary education in Mumbai. The members
found
that while there were a decent number of municipal schools in the city,
chil-dren in the primary classes had difficulty coping in the
classroom,
as they had had no pre-primary
background. It was decided to start balwadis in the age group of 3
to 5 years in the slum areas of the city.
Pratham has initiated a large scale
programme on joyful educa-tion
covering
all classrooms in mu-nicipal primary schools in
Mumbai. One such programme was the shatak daud/shatak zhep organsied
by the education depart-ment of the municipal corporation. It was
organised
to give a much-needed boost to the math skills of municipal school
children.
Pratham worked with the educa-tion department by developing strategies
and tools to assist and orient the entire city's 1,256 mu-nicipal
schools
to execute this programme success-fully. It devised math games based on
tradi-tional games with the as-sistance of some munici-pal
schoolteachers.
- The First Step, Sunanda Khanna, Humanscape, /eldoc/n00_/01mar98HUS.pdf
Reforms Early Childhood Education
Prof Ram Joshi, former vice-chancellor, University of Mumbai, and
currently
heading a programme of reform in early childhood education, is vocal
about
our national educational policy having to metamorphose in a milieu
where
the school system has, in its value distribution function, largely
traded
in the role of the family. In a swilling climate where it is argued
that
the state system of schooling (read as primary and higher education) is
beyond rescue, totally at the mercy of the ruling ideology, swelling
the
numbers of habitual truants, former VC of the pres-tigious University
of
Mumbai, Prof Ram Joshi's motivations for reform are el-evating. His
recommendations
for a refined programme for early childhood educa-tion ('For a Brighter
Future for our Children: Balakancha Ujjwal Bhavitavya Sathi', January
1996)
may just remain (as appears from recent reports in themedia) a useful
critique
of the existing structures, without the power to provide the
institutional
frame work for their enactment But after all, as Graham Murdock (The
Politics
of Culture, 'Education or Domination?', 1974) says, 'Educational change
is a wager on the future'. That Prof Ram Joshi has voluntarily opted
out
of safeguarding India's singular interest in college and university
level
teaching/ learning systems, to converge his thinking upon the lacunae
in
pre-primary edu-cation, is itself to be regarded as a radical
correction
in policy-making attitude. Therefore, it would be wrong to call him an
erratic change-maker The state-level
committee, the Maharashtra Bal-Shikshan Parishad, initiated on November
15, 1994 to get the Maharashtra government to implement the Yash Pal
Committee's
recommendations, and also, to formulate and publish a comprehensive
policy
on
early childhood education, had complete editorial 'freedom', i.e.
beyond
the government's terms of reference.
- BRICKS IN THE WALL, Shilpa Kagal, Humanscape, 01/07/1996, /eldoc/n00_/01jul96HUS5.pdf
Early Childhood Education Commercialisation of Education Unauthorized schools
"A pre-school should be purely non-formal, with no element of competition, examination, and least of all admission pre-condi-tions," recommended the state-level Ram Joshi Committee on Early Childhood Education in 1995. The committee's recom-mendations formed the crux of the Pre-School Admission Act, which could however, not be passed due to severe opposition from educational institutions. Six years have passed thereafter, and the pre-school sector, particularly the fancy unregistered nurseries, continue to negate every concept evolved in the policy document advocating well-rounded non-competitive education for the vital early years.
- 'Pre-schools amount to
child abuse', Sumedha
Raikar-Mhatre,
Asian Age, 26/06/2001, /eldoc/n21_/26jun01aa1.pdf
ECCE NGO Initiatives
Children have a fundamental right to proper development, irrespective of their age, social class and gender. In contrast, according to latest government figures (Multi Indicator Survey, 2001, Department of Women and Child Development, MHRD and UNICEF), only 48% of children have access to preschool facilities; the actual reality is likely to be much lower. Overall, growth monitoring of only 27% children less than five years is done; of those weighed 22% are found to have low birth weight. This effectively means that a quarter of our children are at risk of ill-health right from the start. 62% of children in the second year have not completed immunization; 25% of children are not immunized at all. While there is a now considerable stress on ensuring the needs of school age children, the needs of the very young are ignored.
There is a need to recognize the distinctive nature of early childhood and plan for it accordingly. These efforts fall under the framework of Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) which by definition involves providing the necessary support for every child to realize his/her right to survival, protection and care and ensuring optimal development from birth to the age of eight years. The government has repeatedly stated that ensuring the needs of young children is a matter of priority which is reflected in its policies and programmes. While the recent move to make education as a fundamental right is a step in the right direction, it has effectively meant the dilution of the government’s commitment to ensure education and care for children under six (which were earlier included in the state’s commitment to ensuring education for all children under fourteen years of age).
- A people's
preschool, Anjela R. V. Taneja and Ira Joshi, Seminar, 01/02/2005,
/eldoc/n21_/01feb05SEM44.html
Pre-school
coverage for universalization of primary education dominated Pratham’s
efforts in the mid 1990s. Pratham’s low cost and replicable model of
community
based pre-school provision led to a rapid expansion of the balwadi
(pre-school) network across the slum areas of the city. In 1995, there
were 200 Pratham balwadis catering to 4000 pre-school age children. By
1996, the number had risen to 350, reaching 7000 children between the
ages
of three and five. By 1998, the pre-school network had expanded
extensively
across the city; through approximately 3000 balwadis, close to 55,000
children
had access to affordable early childhood education.
....How
does pre-school help children in primary school? Would all of the
children
attending Pratham balwadis have enrolled in formal schools anyway? How
has Pratham’s balwadi activity helped to bring every child to school or
helped them to learn better? Estimates suggest that in the 1999-2000
school
year, a third of all children who entered Std I in the municipal school
system with some exposure to early childhood education were from
Pratham
balwadis. Pratham’s own figures showed that unless the child’s family
moves
out of Mumbai, practically all children go on to the formal education
system
– whether it is private schools or government or municipal schools.
Enrollment
in Std I in a city like Mumbai is very high. With or without
pre-school,
most six year olds are children are enrolled in Std I.
In 2000-2001, a study sampled approximately 4000 Std I children in municipal schools across Mumbai and compared children who had exposure to early childhood education with those who had none. The study suggests that in this context the real ‘value-added’ of pre-schools has to do with attendance and achievement.
Overall, the data suggest early cognitive advantage of children who have been to pre-school. Children with a pre-school background scored significantly higher in the first test in Std I in language and maths as compared to children without exposure to preschool. This is especially true for Marathi medium schools. Although there may be problems with the measurement of children’s academic progress in school and questions about the accuracy and reliability of attendance data, analyses based on the school system’s own figures do show the comparative advantage of a child who has been to pre-school before.
- Pratham experiences, Rukmini Banerji, Seminar, 01/02/2005, /eldoc/n21_/01feb05SEM31.html
Children have a fundamental right to proper development, irrespective of their age, social class and gender. In contrast, according to latest government figures (Multi Indicator Survey, 2001, Department of Women and Child Development, MHRD and UNICEF), only 48% of children have access to preschool facilities; the actual reality is likely to be much lower. Overall, growth monitoring of only 27% children less than five years is done; of those weighed 22% are found to have low birth weight. This effectively means that a quarter of our children are at risk of ill-health right from the start. 62% of children in the second year have not completed immunization; 25% of children are not immunized at all. While there is a now considerable stress on ensuring the needs of school age children, the needs of the very young are ignored.
There is a need to recognize the distinctive nature of early childhood and plan for it accordingly. These efforts fall under the framework of Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD) which by definition involves providing the necessary support for every child to realize his/her right to survival, protection and care and ensuring optimal development from birth to the age of eight years. The government has repeatedly stated that ensuring the needs of young children is a matter of priority which is reflected in its policies and programmes. While the recent move to make education as a fundamental right is a step in the right direction, it has effectively meant the dilution of the government’s commitment to ensure education and care for children under six (which were earlier included in the state’s commitment to ensuring education for all children under fourteen years of age).
- A people's
preschool, Anjela R. V. Taneja and Ira Joshi, Seminar, 01/02/2005,
/eldoc/n21_/01feb05SEM44.html
- It's more Meljol with children, Indian
Express, 20/03/2001,
/eldoc/n21_/20mar01ie1.pdf
- Plan to set up nursery schools in
rural areas, Shivani
Singh,
Times of India, 29/12/2003,
ECCE
1. Centre for Learning Resources,
Annual Report, 2003-2004, R.N21.53
Capacity Building Programmes and Materials Promoting Early Childhood
Care and Development, Strengthening Elementary Education
2.
Ministry of Human Resource
Development - Annual Report 2003-2004,
Government of India, 01/01/2004, N00.30
3. National
Policy on Education
1986 - Programme of Action 1992,
Government of India, R.N00.33
4.Different
Approaches for Achieving
EFA - Indian Experience, United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 01/01/2003,
R.N00.41
Websites:
http://wcd.nic.in/
www.motherservice.org