Early Childhood Education in India: A Suggestive Roadmap--2014

The first six to eight years of a child's life, known as early childhood, have been globally acknowledged to be the most critical years for life-long development of children, when the pace of development is extremely rapid. Early experiences at home, in communities, and at other care settings play a crucial role in brain architecture development and lay the foundation for lifelong development potential of children. This growth in the early years supports a range of early skills, including cognitive skills like early language, literacy, and numeracy; social skills like empathy, persistence, attention, and self-regulation; and executive function skills like the voluntary control of attention and behavior. India in recent years has seen a shift in the Central Government's policy and planning efforts as well as State Governments' actions towards improving the quality of education. The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) has developed a National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) policy in 2013. Early-grade reading, writing, and mathematics in primary education have received an impetus under the recently launched 'Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat' program of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) of the government of India. Going forward, a greater convergence of ECE with the formal education system would ensure that children transition smoothly from pre-primary to primary schools, and are indeed 'ready' for school. This report has emerged from the roundtable discussion and simultaneous additional research from available resources. It is hoped that the report would be useful for a diverse set of stakeholders and provide a way forward for a constructive discussion and action on moving towards holistic ECE available to all sections of the society.