– Swati Popat Vats is president of the Early Childhood Association With Covid-19 infections continually spiking, parents are apprehensive about sending youngest children to school and are increasingly accepting the argument that early childhood care and education is dispensable. This is ill-advised because it has been proven beyond doubt that formal ECCE is the foundation of all education and future learning. The global Covid-19 pandemic, which has forced closure of all education institutions including pre primaries in India since early March, has undermined the many years of hard work done by advocates of early childhood care and education (ECCE) especially the Early Childhood Association (ECA, estb. 2011) to impact the importance of ECCE upon parents and government. With Covid-19 infections continually spiking, parents are apprehensive about sending youngest children to school and are increasingly accepting the argument that ECCE is dispensable. This is ill-advised because it has been proven beyond doubt that formal ECCE is the foundation of all education and future learning. Many parents are asking the question: ‘Surely it doesn’t matter if children between the ages of 3-6 years miss a year of preschool?’ Well, it would mean a huge loss in terms of children’s cognitive, language and socio-emotional development. Early childhood refers to the first six years of life. This is acknowledged as the most crucial period when the foundations are laid for lifelong learning and human development. Neuroscience research and evidence shows that over 85 percent of a child’s cumulative brain development happens prior to the age of six, indicating the critical importance of developmentally appropriate care and stimulation of the brain in the early years. During the ages 0-3 years, quality ECCE includes facilitating the health and nutrition of mother and child as also providing cognitive and emotional stimulation to infants through talking, playing, music and sounds, and stimulating the other senses, particularly sight and touch. Exposure to languages, numbers, and simple problem-solving is also important during this period. From 3-6 years of age, ECCE focuses on teaching children self-help skills (such as putting on clothes, shoes, etc), maintaining personal hygiene and cleanliness, coping with separation anxiety from parents, socialisation skills, and physical development through movement and exercise, expressing and communicating thoughts and feelings to parents and others. During these years, children learn the alphabet, languages, numbers, colours, shapes, drawing/ painting, indoor and outdoor play, and logical thinking. Therefore given the vital importance of ECCE in shaping a child’s future, it’s imperative that youngest children have access to a flexible, multifaceted, play, activity, discovery-based education, provided by trained ECCE teachers. However because of prolonged closure of preschools triggered by the Covid-19 health emergency, children have lost over five months of learning. It’s entirely possible that many households may not send children to preschool once they reopen and prefer to wait for the discovery of a vaccine. But it’s important to bear in mind that long breaks from school result in substantial loss of learning (emotional, psychological, academic, physical, social and cognitive) for children. To enable…
