By 2030, India will host a massive population of 600 million youth below the age of 25 — the worlds youngest population. This can be an asset and valuable human capital, provided these young people are educated, trained and skilled. To attain these objectives, we need to start from the foundation level i.e, early childhood — conception to eight years of age. Following breakthroughs in neuroscience research in the early years of the new millennium, its now well-established that children’s brains are almost fully developed by the time they attain eight years of age. To enable delivery of professionally administered ECCE to Indias’ youngest children, a high-quality ECCE National Curriculum Framework is a necessary precondition. Global ECCE frameworks such as the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children, USA), EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage, UK), Te Whariki (New Zealand) and ACECQA (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority) have been adopted successfully not only in the countries where they were formulated, but also worldwide. Some auguries are good. The pioneer Early Childhood Association (ECA) of India, which has a membership of over 3,000 preschools countrywide, has formed a think-tank to propose a model ECCE curriculum framework. Some state governments including Maharashtra have also developed draft ECCE frameworks but they are inadequate and fail to address the development and learning needs of youngest children. Firstly, the word ‘education in early childhood education needs to be replaced by ‘development. The curriculum framework must focus on the developmental needs, not ‘education needs of young children and the approach needs to be individualised and contextualised across private preschools, balwadis, anganwadis and other ICDS programmes. Children across all economic strata, social and cultural settings have the same developmental and learning needs. We need a common pedagogy that will address diversity. The curriculum framework needs to provide broad teaching-learning approaches and experiences rather than detailed academic content. The ECA think-tank of which I am vice president, has proposed that the focus of preschools should not be on getting children ready for primary school. The focus in the formative years needs to be on development of concepts and cognitive skills rather than ‘readiness for primary school. The early years learning curriculum shouldn’t be a downward extension of the primary curriculum which prematurely burdens children with learning the 3 Rs — reading, writing and arithmetic. The curriculum framework should draw upon global ECCE frameworks such as NAEYC and EFYS to define best practices and enable the holistic development of youngest children. Its also very important that we involve experienced early childhood educators, leaders and teachers who have ground-level experience of interacting with young children when drafting the National ECCE Curriculum Framework. Unfortunately, all existing ECCE curriculum frameworks have been prepared by committees dominated by academics and bureaucrats of the Union/state women and child development ministries. ECA has been persistently demanding that the Union and state governments include all stakeholders from the private preschool sector as well as those involved with balwadis, anganwadis, ICDS to design an…
