16 ECCE in India – ECCE / ECE / ECD

G. Baradha

16.1 Introduction

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) movement in India goes back to later half of the 19th century. ECCE is a traditional practice in India, by the grandparents and elder sisters. India has the largest child (0-6 years) population (170 million) i.e.15% of total population of the country. In 2013, it is estimated that 72 million children will be in need of preschool education services. ECCE is significant in the developmental need of the child, which is the right of equality. ECCE is a part of Education for All and first step in the educational ladder.

Learning Objectives

This lesson helps the students to

Understand the status of ECCE in India
Realise the significance of ECCE / ECE / ECD to the future citizens of our country
Understand the efforts taken by the Government / Private / NGO for the welfare of the children

16.2.1 Importance of early Childhood Years

The first six years in a child’s life is the most significant period in life, because this is the stage, when the foundation is laid for the overall development of an individual, in terms of his/her motor, sensory, cognitive, language, social and emotional development. This is the period when the brain is developing at its fastest pace and researches has proved that if a child does not get a stimulating environment at this age, the child is likely to lose out on developing to his / her full potential.

Stimulation

Brain development is very fast and 80% of it is over by 8 years. Neural connections in brain development take place even when the child is in mother’s womb. Aim of stimulation is towards the overall development of children.

Benefits of investing in early stimulation

Many researchers have proved that providing good nutrition and health care during early years is the investment for child’s later development which has long term effect on the part of child’s overall development, family status and national growth. It is practically found that children who participated in the well-designed stimulation schemes such as ECCE centres / anganwadies are:

i.helping children to be academically good in primary school

ii.socially and emotionally more competent

iii. higher in verbal and cognitive skills

iv. welfare scheme for the child, which in turn leads to economic success in later life

v.inculcation of habits and values to last a lifetime

vi.aims at future development, the individual would step into successful career thereby contributes for the economic growth of the country.

vii.increase the child’s survival level, health and development. In order to protect the child from diseases there by reduces the IMR, and increases the school enrolment.

viii.stimulation programme which helps the downtrodden people, thereby reduce the poverty level of the country. Having this view in mind, since it is useful for child’s growth and intern for national development, UNESCO supported ECCE in its policy. Early stimulation enables the ability in adults to bring out the capacity for total development.

Why is ECCE important for the development of the nation

India’s children are the future of the country. If their development is taken care of interms of survival, protection, development and participation, they grow well. These children contribute a lot to the nation’s development and women empowerment. In olden days, joint family system contributed a lot to rear the children, in the ways of being role model, disciplining and recreating the children. At present due to breakup of joint family into nuclear family systems children are left over in the hands of ayas. Due to inequality in society the socio-economic status of the large number of families live in poverty situation because of which children’s development is at risk. However, the stimulation and care that can be offered by parents are limited. It therefore becomes imperative to provide such stimulation and care in a structured and organized manner through established centers of intervention (ECCE Centres).

ECCE centres provide health care, nutrition, play opportunities and learning materials for cognitive development. The infant mortality rate of India is still very high. Secondly malnutrition is a major cause of ill health of Indian children. The third aspect of ECCE is the opportunities for learning. Though highest priority is given in the education sector for Universalisation of education of children, the present statistics in Indian education indicates that most of the drop outs are female children, SC/ST background and from poor homes. This allows the Governments in due course to devote attention to improve quality. Demand for ECCE services is at the increased scenario.

Thus in the context of the country’s commitment to ensure basic Education for All, ECCE emerges as an area of priority. “Improving children’s well-being at the earliest age must be an integral and systematic component of education and poverty reduction policies”.

16.2.2 What is ECCE?

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) is generally defined as the care and education of children from birth to eight years. ECCE aims at the promotion of motor, physical, social, emotional, language, cognitive and moral development.

The ECCE centre has different categories of children. They are

Crèches / home stimulation for 0-3 years
Preschool for 3-6 years and
Primary education for 6-8years.

Importance of ECCE

ECCE is a child centered programme which focuses on the play way method of learning. Importance of ECCE are to:

Provide experiences for the learning process
Fulfill the right of children
Smooth transition from ECCE to primary education
Support parents/ mothers who are employed
Meet the needs of changing family structure
Promote girl’s education
Cater to the increased rate of brain development
Remove the social inequality and
Investment in human resource development

16.2.3 What is ECE (Early Childhood Education)?

It is an education provided to children below the age of eight years in a stimulating environment which leads to formal school readiness. The programme components relate to the developmental needs of children and the fundamental skills needed for their latter learning.

Strategies

Diverse strategies to provide simulative environment
All strategies to be highly integrated and supportive to each other
Scope for every child’s participation
Not confined to duration
Centers to enthuse the participation level of different age group children
Informal and provides scope for a lot of flexibility and innovation (UNICEF REPORT)
Develops familiarity with persons
Provides learning environment
Gives secure feeling
Promotes socialization
Means for language development
Basis for habit formation

16.2.4 ECD (Early Childhood Development)

Various dimensions of child’s development is at ‘its’ peak from birth to six years, which include development of self. Provisions in ECCE maximize the child’s ability during the crucial time of infancy and early childhood foster social and cognitive growth of the child.

16.2.5 ECCE in India

Pre Independence period

Organized preschool education did not exist in India till the end of 19th century. The information available from early 17th century onwards indicates that child rearing seems to have been according to socio-religious patriarchal norms and was highly influenced by factors such as caste, kinship, age and gender. The institutional services existed only for the rich upper classes (Khalakdina). British missionaries introduced the concept of infant school in the later part of the 18th century, situated in western and southern regions of India. Owing to a large school dropout, these infant schools were closed.

Mahatma Gandhi proposed the first indigenous scheme for education of very young children, which was termed as pre-basic education. These schools were formulated by various educational reformers, social workers and pioneers being Jugatrambhai Dave, Naanabai Bhatt, and Tarabai Modak. But the prominent influence of ECCE which can be felt even today, is of Madam Maria Montessori who came to India in1939. Influenced by her, Annie Basant and Rukmani Arundal helped Montessori to set up a teacher training centre at Adayar, near Madras. Many of the early childhood educators received training and spread the movement of early childhood education at various parts of the country.

Later the trained teachers attempted to develop an indigenous educational system that integrated the basic Gandhian philosophy with the educational principles and scientific pedagogy of Montessori, Gijubhai Badheka, and Tarabai Modak and established the Nutan Bal Shikshan Sangh. A training centre started at Bhavnagar, by Gijubhai, later Tarabai at Bombay. The movement took strong roots in the Saurashtra region of the province, Madhya Bharat and Vidharbe regions.

In 1945, Tarabai Modak, took the preschool movement to village, started Bal Shikshan Kendra for the education of rural children and she named it as ‘Balwadi’, meaning children’s garden, i.e. bal means children and ‘wadi’ means a garden.

The term Balwadi is now commonly used in all Indian languages for a pre-primary class conducted in villages or backward localities in cities. Later these balwadis were started in a tribal habitation. Thus during the pre-independence period, the efforts to promote early childhood education were largely confined to the voluntary sector from the government.

Post Independence period

It was for the first time in 1944, Sargent Committee (1944) appointed by Education Department of central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) identified the importance of Preprimary education and linked it with the child’s educational performance in primary school. In 1946, Kasturba Gandhi trust was set up with the aim of training women workers for Balwadis.

In the post Independence period too, preschool education drew support largely from the private and voluntary sectors. Through many official committees, plans and commissions made valuable suggestions on the value and content of preschool education, no substantial allocations or systematic efforts for implementation of these suggestions were made.

Panandhikan Committee (1949) recommended 33.5 percent of sanctioned budget to be given as grant-in aid for preschool education. It also stressed on the appointment of experts in early childhood education to inspect preschool.
Central Social Welfare Board – was established in 1953 during 1st Five year plan (1950 – 56)

2000 National Policy on Population
2001 National Policy on Empowerment of Women
2002 National Health Policy

Inter Ministerial Co-ordination

Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD)
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW)
Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)
Department of Education and Literacy

ECCE services in India

Government
Private
Non-Government

Government

Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) (1975)
Early Childhood Education Scheme (1982)
Scheme of assistance to voluntary organization
National Crèche fund
ECCE under Primary / Elementary Education programme
District Primary Education programme (DPEP)
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
Mahila Samakhya
Janshala
Convergence model of ECCE – preschools attached to preprimary sections

Voluntary / NGO initiatives

Primarily work with special communities on difficult circumstances like tribal people, migrant laborers and rural children
Laboratory nursery schools attached to Universities
Various religious groups run preschools
Commercial (Fee charging / Profit making) pre schools
Nurseries, kindergarten, Montessori type and pre-primary classes in private schools

Evaluation of the child in ECE Why? When? How?

i. ECE is totally development / welfare oriented and not curriculum oriented, hence there is no necessary for formal test, but informal evaluation is required for developmental attainment.

ii. All aspects of development to be assessed for each child and group evaluation is not advised

iii. Children have to be assessed in the natural set up when they are in the play yard, do the creative activities, and answer to the questions and during free play.

iv. Formulated worksheet may be used to observe and make quick assessment

v. If some specific problems are there, to be discussed with parents immediately and help the parents to take remedial measures.

16.2.8 ECCE-The challenge

The researches showing that early education programmes on children’s education have very strong and rich benefits and the learning method have captured the attention of many. There are instances where children missed out early childhood service, which leads to under development. Increasing early childhood participation including evidence of some preschool growth is encouraging so that the ‘under-served’ children who didn’t get enough attention can be benefitted from this. There are lot of challenges that exist in running the ECCE programmes. And they are:

i) Exploring the potential of ECCE

Basically ICDS is a worldwide famous, integrated approach for total development of children, which unite the sectoral services, with the aim to promote child’s survival, growth and participation which go hand in hand. Unfortunately, in spite of the advantages of ICDS, it is far below the described level. To conserve the spirit of holistic and integrated approach, it requires assimilation of bureaucratic organization and various sectors of development and specialized compartmentalization in its process of implementation.

ii) ECCE needs recognition

Many preschool institutions are run by private sector. These efforts have played an important role in introducing the ECCE concept in the beginning of the century. The private initiatives are to be recognised as an essential part of the educational system of the country.

iii) Low status of ECCE

The modern perception of ECCE is that it interferes in solving a wide range of problems occur due to the poverty such as malnutrition, disease and high rate of school dropout. It is commonly believed that not much skill based or technical knowledge is required for planning, implementing and monitoring such programmes. The general awareness of the professionals and technical aspects of ECCE is quite poor. The public doesn’t have much awareness on the importance or need of ECCE services.

iv) Access

Since NPE (1980) and POA (1992) were adopted, large attention has been given at the national level in the last two decades. Issues who are going for ECCE services, which communities do not have access to ECCE services, which is creating access are government, private sector or NGOs and what are the factors determining access are the major concerns.

v) Capacity building

To build a quality workforce capacity building is needed. There are not well developed training systems for early childhood educators except the Government’s involvement in ECCE. Qualification requirements exist only for teachers and not for the others. There is no laid down norms for appointment of ECCE staff, and there are no guidelines for the detection of ECCE staff as teachers. Training for the new comers’, period of training in to theory and practice are some of the problems in ECCE.

vi) Advocacy

Parents from all walks of life and at all levels, have little or no awareness about the importance of early years in the life of children or about how to promote their children’s development. To sensitize the public, from parents to policymakers, a wide and sustained campaign is needed. Awareness to be created among the public about the significance of early years of children, and also purpose, content, and scope of the ECCE.Community participation is the key to the advocacy as it empowers people and leads to sustainability.

16.2.9 Conclusion

A brief review of pre and post independence initiatives in the area of preschool education clearly indicates the growing awareness and gradual rise in private and governmental efforts. Preschool education is now a part of the total Early Childhood Education (ECE). As per the latest policy documents ECE in India will ensure good:

basic learning conditions for children
professionally trained teachers
basic infrastructure
ECCE curriculum and
all round development of children (net reference).

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Bibliography

Venita Kaul (2009). Early Childhood Education Programme, NCERT; New Delhi.
Gupta,M. S. (2009). Early Childhood Care and Education, PHI Learning Pvt-Ltd, New Delhi.
Conference Dossier (2013). International Coference on Early Childhood Development: Small Steps to a Bright Future, Jania Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
Seminar Report (1999). Sub Regional Seminar on Innovations in Early Childhood Care and Development, UNICEF, Chennai & Hyderabad.

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