In a major attempt to create proper education opportunities for children from the marginalised communities, experts from different civil society during a workshop organised here on Monday laid emphasis on outlining quality learning framework for kids enrolled at Anganwadi Centers.
According to the resource personnel associated with Early Child Care and Education (ECCE) project, most of the Anganwadi Centers functioning across India is entangled in different problems which need to be tackled at the earliest to strengthen the foundation level of the deprived children.
Presenting a consolidated report about the status of Anganwadi Centers functional in the country, Technical Advisor, ECCE, Save the Children, Arpita said that there is no focus on kids falling in the age group of (0 to 6 years) whereas the public expenditure in ECCE is immensely low in which base for overall learning and development cannot be easily achieved.
“Unfortunately, over 28 per cent children in India do not go to any school, Anganwadi Centers or elementary education centers, out of which 30 per cent of them are kids from ST and SC communities. Merely 40 per cent Anganwadi Centers have own buildings. Moreover, 30 per cent Auxiliary Nursing Midwives (ANMs) do not receive any formal training on ECCE,” Arpita added.
Another expert, Dr. Anubha Rajesh from Centre for Early Childhood Development and Research, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi stressed on adopting innovative learning practices, capacity buildings, child-friendly curriculum including proper module for ANMs, supervisors, Child Development Programme Officers (CDPOs) for getting the desired outcome in ECCE.
Further, sharing the details about the issues in ECCE in context to Jharkhand, Dr. Anubha said, “Children for 3.8 million of the population in Jharkhand are below six years of age. 25 percent fall below the poverty line with limited opportunities for survival and development.
Only 50 per cent vulnerable segment receives some elements of child care services. Low socio-economic status, low attendance rate, low retention rate are a few basic problems here.”
The State level ECCE Consultation organised by Save the Children in collaboration with Jharkhand Right to Education Forum (JRTEF) and Department of Women and Child Development and Social Welfare took a stock of the ECCE issues and good practices in the State of Jharkhand.
The key organiser of the workshop ‘Save the Children’ is implementing an ECCE intervention in 200 Anganwadi Centers and 100 Primary Schools under the Project “Creating Education Opportunities for Children from the Most Marginalized Community”.
The particular intervention seeks to create models that would enhance the school readiness of the children from 3-6 years coming in the Anganwadi Centers. It is based on the framework of school readiness focusing on four aspects – Ready Family, Ready Children, Ready School and Ready System.
Issues like infrastructural development, design and supply of child friendly PSE kits, provision of technical assistance to officials, functionaries at all levels in rendering a high quality ECCE programme, drafting of training module, academic calendar of activities, preserving multilingual diversity, planned exposure, creation of school preparedness packages to promote smooth transmission from Anganwadi Centers to Primary cradles, conversion of all Anganwadi Centers into learning centers prioritizing on learning issues, jotting a convergence strategy/ collaborations with Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan (SSA), fortifying link between Anganwadi Centers and primary schools by inducting additional highly trained teachers were elaborately discussed during the workshop.
In addition, Programme Officer of UNICEF, Samuel Singh asserted that UNICEF in collaboration with Government of Jharkhand (GoJ) is chalking out a standard framework on the lines of Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan including Chhattisgarh to reinforce ECCE in a more effective way here in Jharkhand.
“The focus will be on designing curriculum, activity book and assessment cards for one year based on different languages while adopting the best practices and NCERT guidelines.
The emphasis will be on monitoring, evaluation, partnership, non-negotiable indicators,” Singh said.
