PANEL DISCUSSION Should the RTE Act include preschool education? This panel comprised five knowledgeable and pre-eminent ECCE (early childhood care and education) professionals from across India — Swati Popat Vats (SPV), founder-president of the Early Childhood Association of India; Lina Ashar (LA), founder-director of the Kangaroo Kids chain of 116 owned and franchised preschools and K-12 schools; Niranjanaradhya V.P. (NVP), programme head for Universalisation of School Education Programme at the Centre for Child and the Law of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore; Ambarish Rai (AR), national convenor of the RTE Forum, and Prriety Gosalia (PG), CEO of Leapbridge Education which runs a group of preschools in Pune and Mumbai — and was chaired by Dilip Thakore (DT), editor, EducationWorld. DT: The TSR Subramanian Committee Report on the new National Education Policy 2016, submitted to the Union HRD ministry last May, has recommended that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009, which makes it mandatory for the State to provide free and compulsory elementary education to every child between 6-14 years of age, should be extended to preschool education to cover children aged three-six years. What’s your reaction Swati? SPV: My reaction is mixed. The Early Childhood Association believes that all children below six years have the right to quality early childhood care and education and the RTE Act must cover them as well. The latest ASER (Annual Status of Education Report 2016) published by the highly respected NGO, Pratham, highlights that the majority of class V children in rural India can’t read class II texts. Moreover, the last time a batch of selected students from India wrote PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) — an international objective test to assess the real learning outcomes of 15-year-olds of 74 countries — our students were ranked #73 or second last. This is because we have neglected ECCE. Education in India begins from age six onwards. If we don’t bring in early childhood education under the purview of the RTE Act and the National Education Policy, we will never improve our primary learning outcomes or PISA ranking. However, I am not happy with the implementation of the RTE Act in school education. There is a big danger that the State will pass on its obligation of providing ECCE to private preschools just as it has done for primary education. And after it has done this, government interference in private preschools will increase. My advice to the government is to first fix the country’s 1.34 dysfunctional anganwadis before starting to regulate private preschools. DT: What do you think Prreity? Are you in favour of including preschool education in the RTE Act? PG: Yes. I strongly believe the RTE Act should cover early childhood education. Preschool education is as much the fundamental right of children as primary education. Early years education is critical to preparing children for primary school and indeed all future learning. Unfortunately in our country, we have segregated young children based on their economic status with households…
