A spotlight on early childhood education

Early childhood is a time of tremendous brain development. This is also a time where children have high levels of emotional sensitivity; both positive and negative experiences can have lasting effects.

The importance of early childhood finds mention in our Constitution. The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986, expressly mentions the importance of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE).

The NEP 2020 underlines the importance of providing care, health and nutrition and early learning opportunities to all young children. More importantly, the new education policy emphasises early education and incorporates several significant improvements. The age range in focus is now zero to eight years. This is an extension from the earlier bracket of zero to six years.

In addition to health and hygiene, the policy also focuses on enhancing the mental growth of the child, providing affirmation that early education is the foundation for higher learning and the development of creativity to facilitate a well-rounded personality. This is a significant shift in thinking from the belief that early education is meant to serve the narrow purpose of laying the foundation for basic literacy and numeracy.

The policy states that "education must develop not only cognitive capacities — both the foundational capacities of literacy and numeracy and higher-order cognitive capacities, such as critical thinking and problem-solving — but also social, ethical, and emotional capacities and disposition."

The concept of school complexes or clusters is refreshing. The aim of the school complex or cluster will promote greater resource efficiency. The school complex or cluster will consist of secondary schools with others offering lower grades in its neighbourhood, including Anganwadis, in a radius of five to ten kilometres. If implemented, this suggestion could work wonders for our school education.

Commercialisation

The sad reality today is that early education is completely derailed from the guiding principles of pedagogy and has become a sector that has been commercialised. Over the last few decades, playschools with non-existent infrastructure, managed by untrained persons have mushroomed in metros and small towns (Montessori and play way methods of education are available in a sprinkling of franchisee run schools that can be afforded only by the upper classes).

Sensing how lucrative the field was, private and aided schools, with some name jugglery and smart bookkeeping, have brought LKG and UKG classes into their ambit within existing school premises.

Parents enrol their three-year-old children in these ‘regular’ schools as otherwise, entry to Class 1 is out of the question. Since the same set of children move from classroom to classroom, right up to class X or XII, the teacher-pupil ratio in preparatory or KG classes is the same as that in the higher classes.

Since these classes are held in the same premises for all classes, young children who have just started schooling are also largely limited to the classroom and following classroom discipline. A school cluster concept if implemented would go a long way in ridding them of this unnecessary imposition on young children.

Specific focus

“A National Curricular and Pedagogical Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (NCPFECCE) for children up to the age of eight will be developed by NCERT in two parts, namely, a sub-framework for zero to three-year-olds, and a sub-framework for three to eight-year-olds, aligned with the above guidelines, the latest research on ECCE, and national and international best practices”. This is another possible improvement.

As of now, preschool and KG classes do not have a defined curriculum or syllabus. In the absence of prescribed textbooks and workbooks, most schools initiate the children directly into ‘formal learning'.

After this is successfully accomplished, (thanks to the enthusiastic parents, most children succeed in mastering the basic reading and writing skills) the next easy time filler that schools do is to fast forward and put the KG children through Class 1 lessons.

Children in the upper KG classes aged five years and above are made to write in cursive and running hand — activities that are not recommended for the age. Given our resource limitations and poor teacher-pupil ratio, good books brought out by NCERT will work wonders for young children.

The NEP 2020 holds promises of improving early school education. The fact remains that these are only guidelines and it is not obligatory for schools to follow. Private schools are run on business mode and are unlikely to let go of their hold over the early classes. As such the best bet for change are the promised books.