What should a 5 year old be doing? Depends on who you ask

• In Event: Access to Quality ECE in Developing Country Contexts: Challenges and Innovations

Proposal

The Sustainable Development Goals have put access to and quality of early childhood education firmly on the global agenda. In India, these goals are reflected in the National Policy on Early Childhood Care and Education (NPECCE) which was approved by the Government of India in 2013.

The NPECCE affirms the Government of India’s commitment to “promote inclusive, equitable and contextualized opportunities for promoting optimal development and active learning capacity of all children below 6 years of age”. It aims to do so via provision of an “age and developmentally appropriate, child-centric curriculum transacted in the mother tongue/ local vernacular”.

However, evidence on scale with respect to children’s participation in, and the outcomes of, ECE programs has been scarce. The India Early Childhood Education Impact (IECEI) study, a longitudinal study implemented jointly by the Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development at Ambedkar University Delhi and ASER Centre, aimed to fill this gap, tracking a cohort of 14,000 children in 3 major Indian states from age 4 to age 8. This study generated a wealth of quantitative and qualitative data that provides many insights on young children’s participation in educational institutions in India.

This paper focuses on some major findings from the IECEI study that clearly illustrate the gap between federal mandates on young children’s participation in educational institutions and ground realities in rural India. Evidence from the quantitative survey shows that while access to preprimary institutions is no longer a problem in much of rural India, neither parents nor educational institutions follow the norms prescribed by policy with respect to the objectives, timing, or content of early years education. As a result, only a minority of sampled children follow the trajectory recommended by national policy for preschool and early primary grades.

Emerging from qualitative parental interviews, a factor that appears more impactful than central government mandates is outreach by local service providers. A strong community awareness program can go a long way in creating understanding of and demand for ECE among parents, whether in the government or private sector. This can be especially influential when the focus is not just on normalising ECE participation, but also disseminating awareness of its importance to children’s development. Evidence from this analysis suggests that without strong efforts to convince both service providers and parents of the nature and value of exposure to an age and developmentally appropriate curriculum in the early years, regulation alone is unlikely to transform practice on the ground.

Authors

• Ben Alcott, University of Cambridge

• Manjistha Banerji, ASER Centre

• Suman Bhattacharjea, ASER Centre

• Mansi Nanda, ASER Centre

• Purnima Ramanujan, ASER Centre