Fwd: [se-ed] DISCUSSION: Strategies to Increase Focus on Early Childhood Care and Development. Reply by 12 March 2010

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shashi Prakash <shashi.pra@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: [se-ed] DISCUSSION: Strategies to Increase Focus on Early Childhood Care and Development. Reply by 12 March 2010
To: Education Community <se-ed@solutionexchange-un.net.in>

Dear Friends,

My exposure to functioning of ICDS program was quite disappointing, notwithstanding the fact that it is the only government supported program which operates at sub-village level. It led me to critically think the reasons for government or users not taking this seriously.

Child nurturing was exclusive domain of family, perhaps mothers. Now that we are leading towards a system where child health, nutrition, education, and other services are being take care of by government and society, it may require a change in the concept of childhood. With 5-10 major business houses running pre-school centers and catering mainly to metropolitan and upper middle class needs, we are witnessing many new concepts being experimented. It is really enjoying (or annoying) to see parents sending a two year old in the early morning hours to one of those play schools.

One of my recent readings includes a book by Minu Swaminathan. This reminds me the fact that 0-6 (or 3-6) years of age is of intense learning, mostly done outside the school framework, which you may call practical learning or experiential learning. Group behavior, cognitive patterns, brain and body coordination and many such finer things are happening inside the child, without even any of us or child realizing it.

I completely agree with Angela, that a separate act is required which holistically look into the developmental needs of children during 0-6 years of age. This act shall not only look into matters related to health, education, nutrition but sociability, family values, play and sports also.

When done for general population, I would also like to emphasis special group needs and rights. We are doing a project with the children of sex workers in Delhi. Younger children do not find a comfortable place to live and play, when they are with mothers. Children between the age group of 3-6 essentially pick up undesirable behavior traits. There is high likelihood of discrimination and stigma when such children go to schools and interact with wider group. It has been observed in our project that children ultimately fall back to their own group, having children from similar family and social background. This process of exclusion has to be broken at the early age. I would request my friends in this community to further highlight such specific issues. In any case, we shall not be fooled by business houses running pre-school program as the model of new wave in early childhood care.

Regards,

Shashi

Aide et Action

Delhi

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From: Venita Kaul [mailto:vkaul54@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 5:07 PM
To: 'Education Community'
Subject: [se-ed] DISCUSSION: Strategies to Increase Focus on Early ChildhoodCare and Development. Reply by 12 March 2010

Moderator's Note: Dear Members, after a long time, we are happy to initiate a discussion on Early Childhood Care and Education for members' advice. As all of us would agree, this issue is of significance, given the importance of 0-6 years, in a persons' life. The kind of developmental and early learning opportunities as well as nutrition and health inputs a child is able to receive at this age, has a lot of bearing on her future.  

We are happy to announce that Venita Kaul, a known specialist in the area of Early Childhood Care and Development has agreed to be the Guest Moderator for this discussion. Venita Kaul recently retired as Senior Education Specialist from World Bank, India office and has written extensively on the educational and developmental needs of this age group. Even after her retirement from the World Bank, her focus is maintained on ECCD. We are sure members would be forthcoming in sharing their advice and suggestions for better strategization of ECCD in the country.

We look forward to your active participation.  

Shubhangi

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Dear Members, 

I work for Center for Early Childhood Education and Development (CECED), which is located in Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). CECED's mission is to contribute to the national goals of social justice and equity by advocating for and promoting every child's right to a sound foundation for life, through contextually appropriate and inclusive ECED and to place ECED in the forefront of policy formulation and effective programme implementation.

After a long battle, education has become the fundamental right for children in the age group of 6-14 years. However, the Right to Education Act has left out the very important age group of children below 6 years. The reason given is the fact that 86^th Constitutional Amendment and its Article 21A through which right to education was accepted as a fundamental right, talks about children between the age group of 6-14 only.

Therefore, the Act clearly excludes and thus violates the right of the 0-6 and 14 to 18 year old children. As a Bill flowing out of the Amendment, it is clear that the Bill can not go beyond Article 21A, which makes it imperative that the 86^th amendment must be re-amended to correct this anomaly, and when that happens, the change needs to be reflected in the corresponding Act at that point of time. 

However, this omission has resulted in the exclusion of 17 crore children of 0-6 years age group from their entitlement to education as their fundamental right, which is a major cause of concern, given that this age is now empirically established as the most important and formative stage of a person's life. Given this concern, the issue of inclusion of children below 6 years in the Right to Education bill is being raised in several forums.   

In the context of the above, we invite members to share their views on how they believe this important age group and its entitlements should be catered to.

We wish to hear your advice on the following:

• Should it be a justifiable right for only 3-6 year olds and that also to center based Early Childhood Education? Or should it be a right to a stimulating, healthy and enabling environment for all children, from birth to 6 years no matter where they are located? If it is the latter, what kind of government's commitment and public provisions would define this right operationally?
• If it should be only for 3 to 6 year olds and through a center based provision, what steps would be needed to ensure access to every child, given the wide variations in quality? If it is not conceptualized as institution/center based ECCD, but more holistically, what would be the monitoring mechanisms to ensure that every child's right to sound ECCE is fulfilled?
• Should there be a separate act for the right to education and development of 0-6 age group? Or should it be part of the Right to Education Act, given that the nodal Ministries for the two are different (for elementary education it is the Ministry of Human Resource Development and for ECCE it is the Ministry of Women and Child Development

Your inputs and advice will strengthen the advocacy and efforts of diverse sets of people in the area of ECCD and would also give us a clear direction to design our own activities and efforts as a Centre dedicated to early childhood care and development

Regards,

Venita Kaul

Center for Early Childhood Education and Development (CECED)

Ambedkar University,

Delhi

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