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The unfavourable circumstances unleashed by COVID-19 have not spared anyone, but the  impact of it has been felt differently by different groups of people. For no other group does it have a permanent, irreversible, and irredeemable effect as in the case of children between 3-6 years.

It is a fact that early childhood years in a person’s life are the most crucial in terms of development of physical, sensorimotor, social, emotional, linguistic and cognitive faculties. Brain development is most rapid in these years and the rest of a person’s life in terms of learning and development is greatly determined by how they are nurtured in this phase. Several longitudinal studies have displayed high correlation between early childhood programmes and a better future, for instance, in terms of attainment of higher education, better employment and lower crime rate. Losing out on receiving the appropriate developmental inputs at this stage of their lives is bound to have a detrimental impact on the lives of millions of children across the world.

Status of Early Childhood Education in India

The developmental needs of a child in this stage i.e. between 3-6 years are multisectoral, involving elements like nutrition, health, safety, care and play based education.  Recognising its importance , the Government of India started ICDS – Integrated Child Development Services scheme,  which  provides a package of six services, including early childhood care, development and education  to nearly half of India’s 160 million children (0-6 years) today.

Early childhood education (ECE) is provided at the Anganwadi Centres (AWC) by Anganwadi workers (AWW). ECE is not supposed to be a downward extension of formal schooling, but a combination of play-based learning using simple toys and charts, singing, storytelling and some amount of physical activity.

Experts have noted that the nutrition eclipses ECE in ICDS – both in terms of the funds received as well as the time and attention given to it by the AWW. This is due to several reasons like lack of adequate resources, infrastructure, personnel training and overburdening of the AWWs. Despite these shortcomings, AWCs remain the largest providers of ECE in India. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused serious disruption to the entire ICDS system. A number of experts have started to signal how, in the current scenario, we must not lose sight of child nutrition, but hitherto, the aspect of early childhood education has regrettably received less attention.

The motive behind ECE is school preparedness, i.e., to equip children between 3-6 years with appropriate cognitive and sensorimotor skills before they progress to formal education. ECE experts opine that children who do not receive the adequate stimuli up-till the age of six, do not reach the full potential of their brain. This is an irreversible process i.e. if that time-period is over, there is no way of redeeming it.

In addition to ICDS, government pre-schools, NGOs and private pre-schools also provide ECE in India. There is no set of curriculum or method for ECE and all providers follow their own standards. Many of these ECE centres have shortcomings, like high child-teacher ratio, inappropriate pedagogical practices (most commonly employing formal schooling in place of recommended ECE modes of teaching) and being non-inclusive. Despite these issues, a vast majority of children between ages 3-6 were receiving some form pre-school education before the current crisis struck.

Impact of COVID-19 on ECE institutions

COVID-19 has completely upended ECE for a variety of reasons. As soon as the pandemic hit, the ubiquitous AWWs, present in about 13 lakh anganwadi centres across India were given COVID-19 awareness training. They have been engaged in conducting IEC (information, education and communication) campaigns on  precautions like masks and hand hygiene, which, albeit extremely crucial, ended up diverting them from their core job.

The other providers of ECE, namely government pre-schools, NGO and private schools have shut down during the pandemic, with very few of them running online classes. Some of the private schools are charging full fees, have given out the books and syllabus, expecting parents to take up the responsibility of teaching their children. Overall, whichever economic bracket they belong to or region they live in, all children have been left out in the lurch.

Parental Perception

Shyambhavi (Ghaziabad), a working mother of two boys, shares that her younger son, four, was slated to start pre-primary school this year. That has obviously not come to pass and now her older son, nine, teaches the younger brother a rhyme or two, but beyond that, there is no progress. He does not like it when she tries to teach him. She righty says that the kids require play-based learning, for which she is neither trained nor has the energy.

Online teaching, the poor substitute of classroom teaching, is proving ineffective when it comes to ECE, as it lacks in real interaction and physical proximity with the teacher and classmates. Kamini (New Delhi), mother of a five-year-old son, has decided to make him repeat the class that he is in currently, as she feels that he is completely listless during online classes, which his school is conducting.

Maya (New Delhi), mother of two boys aged 5 and 3, who works as a domestic helper, laments that she and her husband are uneducated and depended completely on the nearby NGO-run ECE centre for their education. Now it pains them to see the boys loitering about, doing nothing or watching TV, while the parents continue to scrape a livelihood in a disease-ridden city.

The Way Forward – A New Normal

ECE is time-sensitive matter. Therefore, it is critical, not only for the future of the children, but of the entire society, that this matter be addressed urgently, and alternatives be devised promptly and children begin to receive the vital pre-school education.

Experts contend that the ongoing ECE infrastructure has collapsed under COVID-19. Six months since the pandemic struck India, the question of how to ensure vital ECE to the children is still looming large. It has been emphasised that ECE has to be reimagined for the short to medium run by employing all strategies possible. Five of them are discussed here.

Firstly, the need of the hour is positive parenting. Parents’ involvement must increase in the process. SOPs must be designed whereby teachers/AWWs give training to parents on how to ensure that the child receives the required ECE. Wherever possible, online classes involving both parents and children can also be planned. Availability of time is the biggest concern here, especially in cases where both parents are working and taking on domestic duties as well. Policies for income/livelihood support will go a long way in ensuring that parents participate in the ECE process.

Second, is education through online medium. Children so young should have very limited or no screen-time. Recently, the government of Karnataka banned online classes for children up to fifth standard. Apart from its ill-effects on the child’s health, there is the question of exclusion. A wide disparity persist when it comes to access to computers or mobile phones with an internet connection in Indian households. Civil rights experts have emphasised that the online mode cannot be considered a viable alternative for ECE for a vast majority of India’s children, particularly those in the rural areas. There is also a gender divide when it comes to accessibility to devices and technology. Despite these issues, this has evolved as one of the strongest alternatives to face-to-face teaching during the pandemic.

Third, AWWs can reach out to children by employing novel approaches and practicing social distancing norms, for example, in open air classrooms instead of indoor classrooms and meeting children in small clusters through the day in batches. These approaches can be experimented with in green zones.

Fourth, children should be reached out via the traditional media – television and radio. This will increase accessibility to a great extent when compared to computer and internet based solutions and Kerala has already started streaming classes for older children via television.

And lastly, the government needs to step in and step up. ECE has been discussed in the New Education Policy 2020, but governments must step in by figuring out what needs to be done. It should involve experts in the area and formulate SOPs for the current situation. Also, attention should be given to a long standing demand of the civil society, that of amending the Right to Education Act to bring ECE under its ambit. The Government also needs to step up funding for ECE significantly, which has been emphasised by a recent UNICEF report as well.

Few months have passed and there are no signs of the pandemic subsiding anytime soon. It is a pressing need of the hour that all possible approaches be employed according to feasibility, and the children receive what is owed to them for a better tomorrow. This throws a lot of challenges, and needs a wider stakeholder involvement but it is the responsibility of the adult community to ensure the invisible rights of children, and not lose any more precious time.

 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Vijayta Mahendru at vijayta@cbgaindia.org.