It
takes a village to raise a child is a well known quote but I feel in India it
should be- The village should raise every child! Because in India our private
preschools cater to and do a fairly good job for the children enrolled , but
that is just 20% of our child population. The other 80% do not have access to
any early childhood education program or have access to but is not of the
quality that it should be. Our country proudly runs the largest Integrated
Child Development Services (ICDS) or called Anganwadis. But these were
established and remain primarily health and
nutrition centers.
What ails our ICDS program?
•
Run
presently as a health and welfare unit- education is missing.
•
Anganwadi
sevikas are not qualified in ECE but given training as and when.
•
Too
many other duties given to the sevikas and ECD
and ECE take a back seat.
•
Inspite
of a curriculum draft, our ICDS are ill-equipped to follow it due to lack of
resources and training
ASAR
report and Early Years Education-
Every
year the ASAR reports laments the fact that our fifth or eight standard
children cannot even read a second standard reading activity etc. This will
continue to happen unless we focus on early years education because attendance at a quality preschool from age three
predicted better outcomes in English, science, and math when compared with
children that had not attended preschool.
Analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
also shows that in most countries, students who had attended at least one year
of early learning perform better than those who had not, accounting for
students’ socioeconomic background (OECD, 2015, p. 326).
What is the importance and impact of early years
education?
It helps children develop the Potential to think
rationally, Persist with challenge , Use
language, Suppress impulse, Regulate
emotion , Respond to
others’ distress, Cooperate with peers, develop Cognitive and social skills , develop Healthy
habits. And hence, the vast differences in the early experiences of a
child in the ICDS program and a private program make it unlikely that the two
children will ever perform equivalently in school and later employment arena. Its
time to invest in early childhood education, especially in our ICDS program to
ensure that we take care of the other brain drain!
An oft asked question- is there any research to prove
that investing in quality early childhood education programs help a country?
The answer is, yes, read the Heckman report.
James J. Heckman is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor
of Economics at the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate in economics and an
expert in the economics of human development. He uncovered
a new way of looking at the full picture of the development of human potential.
According to him there is too much focus on the development of
cognitive skills where knowledge can be tested, rather
than on the development of social skills—such as attentiveness, persistence and
working with others. When social skills are combined at an early age with cognitive
skills, they help create more capable and productive citizens.
Every child needs effective early childhood
development to be successful, but disadvantaged children are least likely to
get it. Professor Heckman has proven that investing in the early childhood
development of disadvantaged children will produce great returns to individuals
and society in better education, health, economic and social outcomes—not only
saving taxpayers money but increasing our nation’s economic productivity.
Everyone gains when we invest, develop and sustain the early development of
America’s greatest natural resource—its people.
He highlighted the following benefits of ECE
•
Reduced
costs in remedial education, healthcare, and criminal justice participation
down the line.
• Preschool
helps develop the early building blocks of educational success – learning
colours and numbers, understanding patterns, realizing that printed words hold
meaning.
•
It
socializes children.
•
Any
language, hearing or developmental problems a child may have are picked up
early.
America tried it and here is the proof- The Hechinger
Report-
The
Hechinger Report provided an update about data collected from the Perry
Preschool Project, explaining first the history of the project: “Nearly 60
years ago, a handful of 3-and-4-year-old black children living in a small city
outside of Detroit attended a preschool program known as the Perry Preschool
Project. The children were part of an experiment to see if a high-quality
educational experience in a child’s early years could raise IQ scores.”
“Led
for the last decade by Nobel Laureate James Heckman, an economist at the
University of Chicago, the Perry researchers have also looked at school success
in terms of persistence to graduation, work success in terms of job retention
and life success in terms of physical health and healthy relationships. Perry
Preschool children did better on all of these measures than a randomly selected
group of their peers who did not attend the preschool.”
“The latest results from this long-running
study, released on May 14, 2019, indicate that children of the now
50-to-55-year old Perry participants reaped the same benefits…67 percent of the
adult children of Perry participants completed high school without a
suspension, compared to just 40 percent of the children of non-participants.”
Other countries have also starting investing in early
years education-
Countries like USA, UK, Australia, and many others
have universalized Early Childhood Education. Most of these countries have made
it free at least for 15 hours a week or at least one year of ECE Programs. They
did this, as they wanted every child to benefit from early childhood care and
education so that ‘where you are born’ does not decide ‘where you start from’.
It means equal opportunities to every child.
Where you start from does not determine how far you can
go-
Gaps in knowledge and ability between disadvantaged
children and their more advantaged peers open up long before kindergarten, tend
to persist throughout life, and are difficult and costly to close. Taking a
proactive approach to cognitive and social skill development through
investments in quality early childhood programs is more effective and
economically efficient than trying to close the gap later on.
The rate of return for investments in quality early
childhood development for disadvantaged children is 7-10% per annum through
better outcomes in education, health, sociability, economic productivity and
reduced crime. There’s a growing recognition of the value of investing in
quality early childhood programs. It’s time to act on the evidence. The sooner
we do, the more likely we will be to put our country on the road to greater
prosperity that is shared by all.
If for every rupee invested we get back 7 rupees then
how is it not economically viable? The problem is, in India, Childcare and
Early Childhood Education (ECE) is traditionally viewed from welfare or
education perspective, its time we viewed it from an economic perspective. A
perspective that countries like USA, UK, Australia and many others have
benefitted from.
At last years Education World ECE conference in
Bengaluru, ECA has recommended Public private partnerships for upliftment of
the Anganwadi program-
•
Teacher
training in ICDS and Balwadis, is completely ignored right now, needs to be
outsourced.
•
Curriculum
management to be given to a private partner.
• Give
some incentives in tax and rent to private partners who then ensure the smooth
running of a number of centers regulated by a private body like ECA.
•
Present
model of giving balwadis and anganwadis to NGO to run also needs regulatory
body like ECA.
•
Common
curriculum model and teacher training instead of the present fragmented level
of operations.
The world is taking ECE
seriously, its time India invested in its youngest citizens, who are not the
vote bank but are definitely future nation builders. Let us invest in our
children…all our children because how each one of them is brought up will
impact all of them and us!
“I
believe that each of us must come to care about everyone else’s children. We
must come to see that the well being of our own individual children is
intimately linked to the well being of all other people’s children. After all
when one of our children needs life saving surgery, someone else’s child will
perform it, when one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence in the
streets, someone else’s child will inflict it. The good life for our own
children can be secured if it is also secured for all other people’s children”
-
Lillian Katz
I sign off by saying, to our dearest Prime Minister
Shri Narendra Modiji that its time to adopt the slogan Sab Bachho ka bhala…desh ka vikas!
