Anganwadis should provide early childhood care and education

• The National Education Policy 2020 has perfectly emphasized the importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE), which is critical for the early cognitive, social, and emotional development of a young child.
• According to the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), only 13.6% of children are enrolled in pre-primary schools.
• As a result, the nearly 1.4 million anganwadis of India's Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) must provide ECCE to millions of young children from low-income families. ECCE has long been regarded as the weakest link in the Anganwadi system. This, however, is changing.
• Due to their numerous administrative responsibilities, Anganwadi personnel has little time for ECCE.

Existing System

• The current system, which is best suited to children aged 3-6 years, largely ignores infants and toddlers.
• Unfortunately, impoverished families are unable to establish an early learning environment for their children to thrive due to a lack of parental understanding, which is exacerbated by the everyday challenges of poverty.
• To help them get back on their feet, many low-income families have started enrolling their children in low-cost pre-schools. However, the majority's teaching method is not developmentally appropriate.
• According to some educationists, the enormous workload of anganwadi employees makes ECCE in anganwadis a non-starter — and that all government primary schools should open pre-primary sections, with anganwadis restricting their services to children aged three to five.

Required Changes

• A meaningful ECCE program in anganwadis not only a more logical and cost-effective method, but it is also feasible to implement in seven coordinated steps.
• It is necessary to develop and implement a relevant activity-based early childhood education framework that is autonomous enough to represent the local environment and setting while taking into account local realities.
• Routine tasks performed by Anganwadi staff can be reduced, and non-ICDS activities, such as newborn surveys, can be eliminated entirely if necessary.
• By increasing Anganwadi workers' current pay and allocating the extra time to ECCE, the hours of operation of Anganwadi centers be increased by at least three hours.
• This will also serve as a partial childcare facility, allowing disadvantaged women to earn a living while their children are in daycare.
• Anganwadi workers must be retrained to work in close collaboration with parents, who play an important role in children's cognitive development during the preschool years.
• Both parents must actively participate in ECCE activities at home in order to practice responsive parenting; consequently, Anganwadi workers should be encouraged to engage in intentional conversations with dads as well.
• It is possible to develop and make available to parents an appropriate message as well as low-cost, low-cost educational tools.
• ICDS must regularly provide age-appropriate activity-based play material in sufficient quantities, with Anganwadi staff encouraged to make extensive use of the materials they provide.

Way forward

• State governments should invest in research and training to support early childhood education and ensure that the ECCE programme does not degrade school education quality in the long run.