Getting The Focus Back On Early Childhood Education

Context: Early Childhood Education (ECE) is crucial to the overall development of children, with impacts on their learning and even earning capabilities throughout their lifetimes.

Issues in Early Childhood Education

• Impact of pandemic: During COVID-19 pre-school closures, access has reduced due to less focus on the continuance of ECE delivery during the COVID-19 school closures.
  • Job and income losses led to de-prioritisation of education.
• Issues in anganwadi system: Most children attending preschool are enrolled in the nearly 14 lakh anganwadis spread across the country where there is low attendance and instructional time, and,
  • Prioritisation of other early childhood development services.
• Low priority for ECE within households: In Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy’s report, 45% of the 650+ households surveyed in urban Maharashtra prioritise their older child’s education over ECE.
  • Lack of priority for ECE often means that households choose to forgo investing in ECE altogether.
• Barrier of access: Socioeconomic background of households determines access to preschools and the ability to invest in ECE.  The pandemic has highlighted the glaring digital divide in the country.
• Many parents lack the self-efficacy to support their child’s learning due to lack of knowledge of effective methods to facilitate learning within the home, and appropriate means of using technology.
  • Parents in low-income households are additionally less likely to be able to access support to learn such methods.

Way forward

• Active parental engagement in their child’s education, as children in age group of three to six years spend a majority of their time within household and rely greatly on parental assistance in learning process.
• Conducive home environment in addition to equitable access to schooling system in early stages could lead to overall development of a child. For example:
  • Act of making conversation with a child in early years has significant gains on language skills.
• Committed state action to internalise the importance of ECE among parents.
  • Operationalise support of the state, schools and teachers towards the goal of enabling parental engagement at home.
• Empower households: Efforts must be taken to empower households with time and resources so that they have the ability to prioritise ECE.
  • Provision of non-educational support to low-income households to alleviate income and food insecurities might be crucial in aiding parents to invest in education.
• Adequate resources and institutional support to teachers: Teachers are first point of contact with both the child and the parents. Hence, equipped to effectively engage with parents and address their challenges.
  • Design adaptable and innovative modes of teaching and learning. Collect and expand on information about teachers’ experiences and on innovations they have developed to increase parental engagement during school closures.
• Applications of innovative solutions like E-paatshala programme in Balwadis run by Rocket Learning, and Akanksha schools in Mumbai and Pune resulted in higher parental engagement in ECE.
  • Provision of rations and devices for education.
  • E-paatshala to make available materials at home for educational activities.
• Decentralised approach of identifying and alleviating barriers to ECE, through teachers and school systems as the forerunners.