Date: 05/10/2022

Relevance: GS-2: Issues relating to the development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Key Phrases: Early childcare, Education, Health, SDG Index, Attitudinal barriers, Cognitive abilities, Integrated Child Development Services, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, POSHAN Abhiyaan, Poshan 2.0, Anganwadi Centers, Human Capital Index, Right to Education Act, National Early Childhood Care and Education.

Why in News?

• Improving education and health in the early years can yield durable gains for children and society.

Context:

• Currently, India ranks 121st among 163 countries on the SDG Index Score; our performance on the SDGs of hunger, health and well-being and quality education have been dismal and falling since 2020.
• Our children face constraints like lack of resources and attitudinal barriers, while disparities become more pronounced for girls and children with special needs.
• With only 1 in 4 Indian children developmentally on track in the literacy-numeracy domain, and about 35% of those under the age of 5 years malnourished, much remains to be done in the field of early childcare.

What is Early-childhood care?

• Early childhood (under 5 years of age) is a period of rapid physical and cognitive development and a time during which a child’s habits are formed and family lifestyle routines are open to changes and adaptations.
• The two key elements of early child development include education and health.
• A child’s early years (0 to 5 years) form the foundation of all learning and are therefore the most extraordinary period of development in a child’s life.
• Research has shown that greater cognitive abilities and being developmentally on track with literacy and numeracy in childhood provide for better learning in school and higher educational attainment, leading to major social and economic gains for society in the long run.
• Similarly, providing children with a nurturing environment in early years, with adequate nutrition, hygiene, protection and responsive stimulation, boosts healthy childhood development and delivers positive outcomes.

Objectives of the Early Childhood Care

• Broad objectives of the Early Childhood Care and Education programme are to:
  • Ensure each child is valued, respected, feels safe and secure and develops a positive self-concept.
  • Enable a sound foundation for physical and motor development of each child- as per each child’s potential.
  • Imbibe good nutrition routines, health habits, hygiene practices and self-help skills.
  • Enable children for effective communication and foster both receptive and expressive language
  • Promote development and integration of the senses.
  • Stimulate intellectual curiosity and develop conceptual understanding of the world around by providing opportunities to explore, investigate and experiment.
  • Enhance development of pro-social skills, social competence and emotional wellbeing.
  • Develop sense of aesthetic appreciation and stimulate creative learning processes.
  • Imbibe culturally and developmentally appropriate behaviour and core human values of respect and love for fellow human beings.
  • Enable a smooth transition from home to ECCE centre to formal schooling.
  • Enhance scope for overall personality development.

Early-childhood care programme in India:

• Integrated Child Development Services
  • Launched on 2nd October, 1975, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is the only major national program that addresses the needs of children under the age of six years.
  • It seeks to provide young children with an integrated package of services such as supplementary nutrition, health care and pre-school education.
• Anganwadi
  • Anganwadi is a government-sponsored child-care and mother-care development programmes in India at the village level.
  • The meaning of the word ‘Anganwadi’ in the English language is “courtyard shelter”.
  • It primarily caters to children in the 0-6 age group.
  • They were started by the Indian government in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program to combat child hunger and malnutrition.
• In 1992, India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which called for its signatories to “ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child”.
• Since then, the Indian government has taken several measures to curb child labour and marriage, ensure universal access to primary education (through the Right to Education Act 2009, for example) and enhance the nutritional status of children (under the Poshan Abhiyaan), aimed at improving children’s development outcomes.
• POSHAN Abhiyaan
  • POSHAN Abhiyaan (National Nutrition Mission) was launched by the government on March 8, 2018.
  • The Abhiyaan targets to reduce stunting, undernutrition, anemia (among young children, women and adolescent girls) and reduce low birth weight by 2%, 2%, 3% and 2% per annum respectively.
  • The target of the mission is to bring down stunting among children in the age group 0-6 years from 38.4% to 25% by 2022.
  • POSHAN Abhiyaan aims to ensure service delivery and interventions by use of technology, behavioural change through convergence and lays-down specific targets to be achieved across different monitoring parameters.
• Poshan 2.0
  • It is an umbrella scheme covering the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) (Anganwadi Services, Poshan Abhiyan, Scheme For Adolescent Girls, National Creche Scheme).
  • It was announced in Union Budget 2021-22 by merging supplementary nutrition programmes and the POSHAN Abhiyaan.
  • It was launched to strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach and outcome, with renewed focus on developing practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity to disease and malnutrition in the country.

Challenges for Early Childhood Care in India:

• The weaknesses in the Anganwadi Centers (AWCs) system and poor quality of services provided there are well documented.
• Today, 51% of children from families in the lowest wealth quintile attend AWCs, while more than half the children from the top 20% households attend private care facilities.
• This poor and uneven use of the country’s AWC facility is reflected in India’s poor ranking in the Human Capital Index (116th of 174 countries in 2020) as well as the Global Hunger Index (94th among 107 countries in 2020).
• The disruption of Anganwadi services during the covid pandemic pushed millions of children out of school.
• Presently, the country’s Right to Education Act covers children from 6 to 14 years of age, which excludes children in a crucial phase of brain development.

Way Forward:

• The pre-school curriculum should be designed to include play-based opportunities alongside literacy and numeracy training for the better all-round development of children.
• As recommended by the National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy of 2013, a regulatory framework should be established for ECCE that covers private as well as public pre-school facilities and sets prerequisite quality standards.
• Parents, communities and other stakeholders should also be roped in to explain and publicize why ECCE is crucial and how it shapes children’s foundation of learning for the rest of their lives.
• ECCE needs to be brought into post-covid exercises such as the re-opening of schools and making up for the learning losses of children. Those who are in the initial stages of learning need extra attention.
• Recent policy documents and commitments shown by the government reaffirm that it is cognizant of the need to adopt a ‘life course’ approach towards individual lives.
• However, translating that vision and implementing it on the ground requires aligning and integrating all care interventions across sectors under one framework to efficiently and effectively deliver appropriate services in early childhood, when most needed.

Source: Live-Mint

Mains Question:

Q. “Improving education and health in the early years can yield durable gains for children and society”. Discuss.