Prioritising Pre-Primary Schooling

By Ramakant Chaudhary

NGO Prastham’s Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) has again come up with distressing and frustrating output on India’s education system. Since 2005, Pratham has been flagging gloomy pictures of primary education: scores of school-going children across the country (pathetic situation in Bihar) fall short on basic learning skills. Volumes of news stories are published in the aftermath of ASER report to catch the attention of government but the result is back to square one.

The significant finding of ASER-2019 gives insight on appropriate age of children during their entry into pre-school and Class 1.

More than 20 percent of students in Standard-1 are less than six years old while 36 percent students are overaged as per RTE (Right to Education) guidelines.

If a child is not given opportunity to learn age-appropriate syllabus, he will not grasp subject matter properly and their whole schooling will be wasted.

National policy recommends that children of 4-5 age groups should be in pre-primary classes. At this stage, children should be encouraged to develop social and emotional skills as well as other abilities. They should be well taught conceptual foundation which is needed for formal schooling.

According to the ASER report, only 16 percent of children in Class 1 can read text at the prescribed level, while 40 percent cannot recognize letters.

ASER emphasizes on activities based education for children that helps them build memory, reasoning and problem solving abilities. Put simply, creative activities are more productive than monotonous content learning in early stage of learning.

Educational pedagogy says: “First the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect.”

Quality education is more fruitful than quantity education (more teaching hours in classroom). ASER repot argues that there should be focus on cognitive skills rather than subject learning in early years, which will enable children to learn basic literacy and numeracy effectively.

According to global research, 90 percent of brain growth occurs by age 5, meaning that the quality of early childhood education has a crucial impact on learning and child development.

The draft National Education policy also underlines the significance of quality education in early childhood stage that could be an excellent equaliser for lopsided educational demography split on the line of haves and have nots.

There are major hiccups in the rural education system while a huge part of Indian population still resides in rural areas. Lack of adequate number of schools, no pocket-friendly educational institutions, poor infrastructure, and dearth of talented teachers paint dismal picture of rural education in India.

Despite moribund system of early schooling in many states, there has become a welcome rise in enrolment after the enactment of RTE act.

ASER report shows that 90 percent of children in the age group of 4-8 are enrolled in educational institutions. More girls are going to school, while there are more boys in private schools than girls, says ASER report.

Ministers and mandarins should be sensitive towards the Pratham’s considered view that early childhood education is not only good for the child rather also good for the mother, the family, the society, and the economy.

By Ramakant Chaudhary
(The author of this opinion piece is Sr Journalist and Political Commentator)