NEP 2020: SCHOOL EDUCATION | ECCE: Curriculum and Pedagogy

August 4, 2020

The NEP identifies that over 85 percent of a child’s brain develops by the age of 6 and emphasises on providing critical importance to appropriate care and stimulation of the brain in a child’s early years for healthy brain development and growth. It states that it is, therefore of the utmost importance that every child has access to quality early childhood care and education (ECCE).

The overall aim of Early childhood care and education (ECCE) will be to attain optimal outcomes in the domains of physical and motor development, cognitive development, socio-emotional-ethical development, cultural/artistic development, and the development of communication and early language, literacy, and numeracy.

Curriculum and Pedagogy

1. An excellent curricular and pedagogical framework for early childhood education for children up to the age of 8 will be developed by NCERT, in two parts, namely, a sub-framework for 0-3 year olds, and a sub-framework for 3-8 year olds.

2. The overall aim of ECCE will be to attain optimal outcomes in the domains of physical and motor development, cognitive development, socio-emotional-ethical development, cultural/artistic development, and the development of communication and early language, literacy, and numeracy.

3. On the curricular side, it will be extremely vital to introduce an increased focus on foundational literacy and numeracy – and generally, on reading, writing, speaking, counting, arithmetic, and mathematical thinking – throughout the primary school curriculum.

4. As, at the current time, with lack of universal access to ECCE, a large proportion of children fall behind already within the first few weeks of Grade 1, an interim 3-month play-based ‘school preparation module’ for all Grade 1 students will be developed by NCERT and SCERTs in order to ensure that all children are school-ready.