EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION WELL BEGUN, HALF DONE
While the process of human development is essentially cumulative in nature, the first six years of a child's life are the most critical for his/her development. Thus, investment in programmes for the youngest children in the range of 0-6 years becomes a major priority as the very foundation for basic education and lifelong learning and development.
The all important significance of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is compensation for early childhood deprivations at the home front by providing an appropriately stimulating environment to the children in the areas of health and education. Quality ECE (Early Childhood Education) programmes, a major component of ECCE, have demonstrated a positive impact on retention rates and achievement levels in primary grades.
While most of the coverage under ECCE in India is carried out through the ICDS scheme, other pre-primary and day-care centres are also involved.
Integrated Child Development Services ICDS is the largest ECCE programme, at present, in the country. It is an intersectoral programme, which reaches out to children from vulnerable and remote areas.
The scheme's package of services includes:
* supplementary nutrition * immunisation * health checkups referral services * non-formal preschool education nutrition and health education; for children below six years, and pregnant and nursing mothers.
The 8th Plan period saw the accelerated expansion of ICDS, with the total number of blocks under coverage being 3,072 in the first three years. The ICDS scheme was universalised in 1995-96, through the sanction of projects for all the 5,320 community development blocks and 310 major urban slums. This led to an increase in the total number of anganwadi centres to 0.4 million.
Presently, ICDS reaches 10.63 million children (in the age-group of 3- 6) with its preschool facility. Although the scheme has now expanded and been made more accessible, it is felt that the preschool component needs further strengthening. Towards this end, a monitoring system has been devised to focus on this area; the training curriculum of the different levels of ICDS functionaries has been revised; and the process of the selection of core material for anganwadi centres and supervisory personnel is on, to further strengthen their capabilities. Instructions to the states have also been issued for teachers of primary schools to visit the anganwadi centres for better coordination. This would relieve the girl child from the burden of taking care of younger siblings.
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Creches and Day Care Centres Scheme Custodial in nature, the scheme provides day care services for children (below 5 years) of casual, migrant, agricultural, and construction labourers. 12,470 creches under the scheme cater to 300,000 children. In addition to this, under the National Creche Fund, 642 creches and 150 anganwadi-cum-creches, covering about 20,000 children have been set up.
Early Childhood Education Scheme The scheme, introduced to reduce the dropout rate in primary schools, provides central assistance to voluntary organisations for running preschool centres. With the universalisation of ICDS, ECE and also Balwadi Nutrition Programme were expected to be phased out, by the end of the 8th Plan, with their centres being merged with ICDS.
Future Strategies While the previous plan period witnessed a quantum leap in ECCE services, primarily through ICDS, the component of ECE has only received divided attention. However, the significance of ECCE for Universalisation of Education (UEE) makes it imperative for ECE to be regarded as the first indispensable step in the educational continuum. Future efforts to achieve the same are underlined below:
* Priority to ECE in the education sector: This priority would be translated into action aimed at building resource capacity in ECE at all levels of the existing institutional structures in the education sector which can facilitate qualitative improvement of the ECE programmes at the field level.
* Provision of Basic Minimum Resources: Budgetary allocations for ECE programmes would be in conformity with Minimum Specifications for Preschools produced by NCERT, which delineates the minimum resources required for a quality programme.
* Advocacy: To ensure developmentally appropriate play- based programmes in ECCE, for all children, an appropriate climate and a strong parent lobby would be developed.
* Regulation and Monitoring of Quality: The quality of working practices propagated by the private ECE centres would be regulated by legal and persuasive measures.
* Training: All levels of functionaries would be provided with resource capacity building for planning, implementation and monitoring the standard ECE curriculum.
* Strengthening of ECCE-Primary Linkage: In the context of ECCE's crucial significance for UEE, linkages between ECE and primary education initiated in the previous plan will be strengthened in both operational and programmatic terms.
* Micro and Need-Specific Planning: The ECE programme would ensure flexible response to local patterns of women's work, child-care needs and local culture-specific practices.
* Partnership with NGOs: The participation of NGOs provides resource support for qualitative strengthening of the programmes and would be encouraged for the further development of ECCE.
* Research: Action research in the area of ECCE would be promoted to assess the relative long-term impact of ECE on the subsequent development and achievements of children vis-a-vis the goals of UEE.
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