Not yet the center of education

As we come to India@75, the Anganwadi system, part of the Government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), serves over 30 million children in the age group 3-6 in 1.3 million centers across the country . a victory.

The ICDS scheme is designed to support all children under the age of six with their health, nutrition and education needs – done right, it will make India a leader in early childhood education over the next 25 years and our The delayed demographic will deliver dividends. However, while over 70% of children across India are enrolled in anganwadis, they are plagued by low attendance – parents simply do not see anganwadi centers as centers of learning.

role of parents

Parents’ perception of Anganwadis is shaped by how the system views them. In ICDS reports, parents are routinely addressed as “beneficiaries” – passive recipients of rations, vaccination camps and, most recently, education. But that is not how parents view themselves or their children. For them, education is the gateway to fulfilling their aspirations, and the path to social mobility so that their children can get opportunities they missed out on. The primary school enrollment rate reaching over 90% is a direct result of the link in the minds of parents that education leads to better life opportunities.

However, the education ecosystem including the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)/Anganwadi system is not ready to speak the language of the parents. Those of us in the ECCE field often claim to know what parents need from their children better than they know themselves. But it’s not Sisphine’s job to figure out what parents want—we just need to ask them. In repeated surveys with rural and urban parents of 3-6 year olds, over 80% of parents consistently tell us that their children’s best path to social mobility is through education in English. (speaking and writing) and mathematics. skills. This is what they see when they enroll and send their children to a learning center.

Anganwadi systems with good intentions do not meet the demands of the parents. The ECCE curriculum for various states instead focuses on local language-driven and play-based pedagogy as recommended by leading teachers in India for this age group. They recommend play-based, activity-based learning that is facilitated, free and guided by a skilled teacher – without giving much thought to how parents can perceive this type of learning. No wonder when asked what they thought about the importance of sports, one parent asked us, “Your kids should read, and our kids should play?”

Low attendance in Anganwadis is a tragedy for the development of India’s children. According to experts, Adarsh ​​Preschool has a skilled facilitator who ensures that children spend most of their time in free and guided play. This involves exploring and manipulating their physical environment to develop early language, early arithmetic, social-emotional, executive function, and motor skills – at rates of neuronal activity that will never return as they grow up. The best anganwadis in many states look like this. Rooted in play-based pedagogy by anganwadi workers, attending anganwadi for a set two hours a day helps children build critical skills by playing with inexpensive, locally made, non-destructible toys in a group setting.

However, by ignoring or minimizing the aspirations and demands of the parents (with good intentions), we have pushed the parents to vote with their feet and leave the Anganwadi system. They are sending their children to private preschools as opposed to Anganwadi classes which are extension below the primary school. Here 3, 4, and 5 year olds sit in neat rows, joyless, practicing rote-based learning and memorization of letters and numbers, leaving everyone else alone. More than 7 million children in India attend these age-inappropriate private preschools that focus on rote learning from an early age.

importance of language

To best support our children, we must begin by not patronizing parents and ignoring their powerful, expressed needs for English language skills, writing and math. We must meet the parents in the middle to have any chance of massive impact in the short term. This can be done in simple ways – exposing children to the English language at an early age in an appropriate, non-intimidating way – acknowledging that the language spoken at home is the most important way to reach fluency in any other language. good way.

Giving kids pencils to write for a few minutes a day is a great way to support fine motor skills and later writing, without letting them write letters and numbers, of course. Demonstrating the wonders of math through fun activities like estimating, comparing, sorting, and numbering can help ease the math fear and paralysis that gets in the way of succeeding in STEM in later years. Why not ‘hold them young’ and give the idea that math is fun, easy, and ubiquitous for even the youngest of children? Studies have shown that feeling like one is part of the ‘math community’ goes a long way in reducing this fear, which alters numerical outcomes later in life.

Anganwadi centers may follow a regular daily schedule that balances time spent on self-guided free play and teacher-led activities focused on developing cognitive, literacy and numeracy skills. They can also organize regular Shiksha Choupals (Parent-Teacher Meetings) to showcase the learnings happening in the Anganwadi to the parent community to strengthen their faith in this institution. Additionally, regular messages can be shared with parents to equip them with the nature of engagement expected from them to keep up with the pace of what is learned in school.

However, changing the ECCE curriculum to make room for the parenting mindset in the short term does not mean that we accept the mindset or assumptions taken for granted in the long run – especially when they are actually unproductive practices such as rote-based , are related to memorizing-heavy learning. at a young age. We have enough empirical evidence of mindset change, from our “School Chale Hum” to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign of education, that we can change mind and behavior with sustained action and mass campaigns. A mass campaign for awareness of age appropriate ECCE that brings together parents as stakeholders is crucial over the next five years – our youngest children, and their developing minds, are no less.

As the nation celebrates the joyous occasion of India@75, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reiterated that the spirit of the Amrit Mahotsav of Azadi is by instituting ‘Jan-Bhagidari’ (participation of citizens) to activate India 2.0. has been In the ECCE ecosystem, we need to embrace the power of ‘Parent-Bhagidari’ (Parental Participation) to enable Anganwadi 2.0.

Namya Mahajan, Vibha Iyer and Anupriya Singh are economists serving on the Early Childhood Education Policy Taskforce, and leaders of Rocket Learning, a non-profit that supports more than one million children with early education.