Key Points
The series builds on the foundation of the first 1,000 days of life referring to the time period starting conception until two years old and highlights how the next 1,000 days (from 2-5 years of age) was a crucial window of opportunity for providing nurturing care to children, the researchers say...
During this stage of next 1,000 days, children were often not in direct regular contact with health or education services, with fewer than one in three children aged three or four attending early childhood care and education programmes in LMICs, said the researchers...
There needs to be a holistic approach with an activity-based curriculum rather than traditional academic-focus rote learning which goes against the National Education Policy recommendations.. Further, data regarding children in India attending ECCE programmes was sketchy, with no reliable estimates of current reality, she said...
A 2022 report by a government's task force on ECCE said 285.82 lakh children aged 3-6 years were covered under early childhood education in 2022 under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), with an almost equal number of boys and girls...
While in recent years, the National Family Household Survey-5 has collected data for children aged five years who attended pre-primary school during the school year 2019-20, Roy said the data might not reflect the current reality because that was a Covid year...
