In civilized societies, care of infants and youngest children is given highest priority. Yet despite loud proclamations about our ancient culture and civilization, little attention is paid to the well-being and nurturance of India’s youngest and most vulnerable children. The great majority of India’s 115 million children under five years age — especially in bottom-of-pyramid homes — suffer severe malnutrition, with an estimated 32 percent of them suffering stunted growth.
These are shameful and damning data. Yet until the early years of the new millennium few bothered about the neglect of youngest children. In 2010 EducationWorld convened India’s first national conference on early childhood care and education (ECCE) in Mumbai at which eminent ECCE experts from India and abroad highlighted the critical importance of professionally administered ECCE. Simultaneously, we introduced the annual EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings (EWIPR) to felicitate the small number of enlightened educators providing ECCE to a small minority of the country’s estimated 150 million children under six years of age. The intent of EWIPR was to not only felicitate pioneer ECCE providers, but to also arouse them and other educators to the parameters of ECCE excellence and promote healthy competition to upgrade. Since then inspired by the Heckman Equation of the US-based Nobel laureate economist Dr. James Heckman which posits that every dollar invested in professionally delivered ECCE is $16 saved along the education continuum, EWIPR has been held every year.
EducationWorld’s consistent propagation of the benefits of formal ECCE has borne fruit. Currently, metropolitan and larger cities and the country’s 150-200 million strong middle class is well served by good quality preschools. And not only are they becoming better, a rising number of enlightened educators well-aware of international ECCE best practices are promoting and establishing excellent pre-primaries countrywide. Moreover, government has also belatedly woken up to the primacy of formally-dispensed ECCE. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 mandates three years of compulsory early years learning for all children in the 3-6 age group under its 5+3+3+4 school continuum to replace the centuries old 10+2 system.
Now the major problem is to upgrade India’s 1.6 million Anganwadi Centres (AWCs), essentially nutrition centres for poorest newborns and lactating mothers, which also provide rudimentary ECCE. With sufficient capacity to host only half of India’s 150 million children in the 0-6 age group, AWCs usually managed by a solitary grossly under-paid ‘helper,’ are in pathetic condition. Bringing them up to speed urgently through massive investment is an urgent — and largely ignored — national priority.
Meanwhile in this year-end issue, we present the EWIPR 2024-25, ranking best preschools in 19 cities. We urge all readers and right-thinking citizens to become ECCE evangelists to give our youngest and most vulnerable citizens a good start in life.