Early Childhood Education and Care: An India perspective

Abstract

The importance of early childhood care and education (ECCE) as a component of universal education is acknowledged on a worldwide scale. Countries have thus sought it aggressively. After several attempts, ECCE is now evident in many nations throughout the world. But most of them, especially a large and populous country like India, were unable to either fully accomplish this aim or did so at the expense of quality. This was because of insufficient funding, poor planning, and inefficient implementation tactics. The Government of India has taken a number of initiatives to promote quality, including policies, plans, constitutional amendments, acts, the creation of quality standards and curriculum frameworks, schemes, and flagship initiatives like Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The non-negotiable quality criteria for ECCE were breached in some way by India during this endeavour, which caused predicted and unforeseen problems and difficulties to arise. As a result, the nation has fallen short of its goal of guaranteeing excellence in ECCE. Recent studies, however, show that quality changes have made great strides. Of course, there are under-achievements in certain areas and features, but there has also been improvement in others, demonstrating that guaranteeing quality is a goal that can be attained. In this essay, the researchers discusses the government of India's objectives, evaluate local conditions, pinpoint the main obstacles to ECCE quality improvement, and offer potential solutions.