India

India

India, as a nation, has struggled with school drop-out rates and low learning levels. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has also been raising red flags regarding the literacy levels of our school-going children for the past decade or more.

“Globally, school readiness is gaining currency as a viable strategy to close the learning gap and improve equity in achieving lifelong learning and full developmental potential among young children. It does so by considering all children, especially the vulnerable and disadvantaged, including girls, children with disabilities, ethnic minorities, and those living in rural areas. 

School readiness supports the adoption of policies and standards for early learning, expanding the provision of opportunities beyond formal center-based services to target those who are excluded. School readiness has been linked with positive social and behavioral competencies in adulthood as well as improved academic outcomes in primary and secondary school, both in terms of equity and performance.

Children's brain and physical development is at its fastest pace during their early years (age birth 8). Within this period, the first thousand days are a unique window of opportunity, where the foundations of growth and development are established, with implications stretching across a person’s lifespan. 

A child’s ecosystem is one of the most important factors when considering their development during the early years. However, our experience shows that in India, many households in rural communities and urban slums do not have access to the resources, knowledge, or time to properly engage with children. Moreover, in India, public provisioning for early childhood (from birth to age 6) is available through Anganwadis, which only targets health and nutrition for children aged birth-3. There is hence no focus on the development of cognitive, language, and social-emotional skills.

The Program

The program with United Way Mumbai

School readiness has 3 principal components:

A. School Readiness
School readiness is defined in various ways. It includes the concept that a healthy and productive interaction between the child and the environment will lead to optimal child development. It typically encompasses broad developmental achievements as well as specific skill sets and competencies. Most definitions will include:

- Physical well-being
- Social and emotional health
- Independent learning habits
- Language development
- Cognitive processes like attention, memory, problem-solving, creative thinking, etc.
- General knowledge regarding the environment surrounding the child
- Pre-academic skills for learning of literacy and numeracy

B. Anganwadi Centre Infrastructure
To ensure optimal benefits from education and to deliver all the following developments and competencies in the children, an Anganwadi Centre requires certain basic facilities to be provided to the children. This includes a safe and clean environment, facilities for sanitation, and clean drinking water, hygienic cooking, and storage areas, and stimulating learning material.

C. Community Readiness & Involvement
A key part of the third component – community readiness and involvement – is parenting.Parenting programs are advised to cover 5 domains of nurturing care: caregiving, stimulation, support and responsiveness, structure, and socialization.

Caregiving refers to behaviors and practices of caregivers to provide nutrition, health care, and hygiene necessary for children’s physically healthy survival, growth, and development.

Stimulation describes an external object or event that elicits physiological and psychological responses in the child. A stimulating environment and practices are important for children’s brain development. They include language interaction (e.g., singing, talking, reading), interaction using learning materials and opportunities (e.g., books, pictures, toys), physical interaction (e.g., sports, playing games), and parents’ behavior which serves as a model for children to imitate and emulate.

Support and responsiveness are expressed through social and emotional relationships, the building of trust and attachment, and behavioral interactions such as hugging, holding, and loving physical contact that builds confidence and empathy. Responsive parenting includes prompt responses to a child’s behavior that is appropriate to the child’s needs and developmental phase.

Structure is associated with discipline, supervision, and protection of the child from harm, abuse, and neglect. These parenting interactions are expressed through positive disciplinary practices and a safe, secure, and consistent environment protecting children from violence.

Socialization related to parenting promotes the development of values and attitudes toward life and identity. It is often an expression of cultural, social, and religious morals and expectations.
It addresses all these domains and leverages existing community and government structures to make the impact recurring and sustainable.

The program with Save the Children

The program focuses on four dimensions of school readiness – getting the children ready, making the family ready, making the school ready, and ensuring that the system is ready. It works towards the provisioning of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) as one of the key strategies that will prepare children in the age group of 3 to 6 years with school readiness skills and improve their quality of learning. It adopts the Ready to Learn Common Approach to provide quality learning experiences to children. Ready to Learn, also known as Emergent Literacy and Math is an evidence-driven, play-based response to the global learning crisis, in which millions of children under six do not gain the skills they need to succeed in school and life. It helps preschools, parents, communities, and governments to provide 3-6-year-old children with early learning opportunities and school readiness skills in early childhood care and development centers and at home. It fills the existing gaps in improving the quality of early childhood education in these learning centers. 18 selected Anganwadi centers have been developed as a model of preschool education by providing critical resources and improving the overall infrastructure. They have been provided with adequate teaching learning materials such as ECCE kits to implement preschool activities as per the prescribed state ECE curriculum. Infrastructural requirements and gaps have been identified and support is provided for the upgradation of AWCs into a child-friendly space. Caregivers, parents, and community members have been motivated to send their children to Anganwadi centers regularly and their involvement in young children’s learning is enhanced. These 18 Anganwadi Centers have been working as demonstrative and training sites to enhance the quality of practices in Early childhood education for Anganwadi workers, supervisors, and ICDS officials. This is to deepen their understanding and create peer learning opportunities for Anganwadi workers, and ICDS functionaries, where they can observe and learn the innovative ideas and emerging trends in the early learning space.

The program with Pratham

In this program, Pratham has set up 7 district offices and recruited Master Trainers to scale the birth-3 program in partnership with the district governments. 

Year 1: Pratham works directly with mothers and children in one block in each district and demonstrates the model to the government Anganwadi workers and block and district supervisors through an Immersion Program, to prepare for government uptake from Year 2 onwards. 

Year 2: Pratham trains the government supervisory cadre (district-level Child Development Project Officers/CDPOs and block-level Anganwadi Supervisors). This supervisory cadre will train the Anganwadi workers, who will then implement the intervention of weekly mothers’ groups. Pratham will provide monitoring and review support throughout. 
Throughout the first two years, the model, content, and delivery will continue to be modified to improve effectiveness based on learnings from direct and government implementation. 

Year 3: Pratham institutionalizes the knowledge, measurement, training, and review systems (such as through periodic refresher training) among the government and begins advocacy to scale to other districts and states. 

Partners involved

Local activities

United Way Mumbai

1.    Project Ankur

FGII has been implementing Project Ankur in 19 Anganwadi centers in the Ranchi & Khammam districts of Jharkhand and Telangana in collaboration with United Way Mumbai. The project focuses on school readiness & parentability, works with children directly and makes them school-ready during their formative years of development by working on their developmental milestones such as cognitive, social, and emotional development. The project has impacted 3000 beneficiaries.

Project Ankur mainly focuses on four components.

a.    Infrastructure interventions for a conducive learning environment
Infrastructure initiatives within the center aim at making the Anganwadi’s child-friendly and converting them into a conducive learning environment for the children attending the centers. The implementation comprises identifying the worn-out spaces, renovating, and repairing them, and placing educational wall murals for a better understanding of alphabets, numbers, colors, and shapes.

b.    School Readiness in children
This focuses on providing educational materials and daily teaching activities like shape stackers, lacing plates, hand puppets, puzzles on body parts, and many more. The team also develops flipcharts that will act as teaching aids for the facilitators.  

c.    Community Mobilization for parents and caregivers
Children at home are taken care of by the caregivers when parents go out to work. The team conducts numerous activities and awareness camps for the caregivers and topics like nutrition, breastfeeding, and maternal health are covered during these awareness camps.

d.    Mental wellness of mothers
FGII focuses on the mental health of parents to improve the relationship between parent and child. This includes assessing the mental health of would-be mothers and mothers who are already a part of the program. Recreational activities like yoga, meditation, stress management camps, counselling and regular workshops, and awareness sessions on dealing with taboo attached to mental health, understanding signs & symptoms, etc. are conducted on a regular basis.

Save the Children

FGII has been implementing Project Ankur in 18 Anganwadi centers in the Jodhpur district of Rajasthan in collaboration with Save the Children. The project focuses on school readiness & parentability, works with children directly, and makes them school-ready during their formative years of development by working on their developmental milestones such as cognitive, social, and emotional development. The project has impacted 1300 beneficiaries.

Objective - Contribute towards improving access to quality early learning for girls and boys in the 3–6-year age group. 
I-     Infrastructure development of the Anganwadi centres
All the Anganwadi centres are refurbished completely and have provision for all-weather rooms with colourful exteriors, interior, and portable handwashing stations. Reading corners are developed in all the centers and materials such as rhyme books, picture books, fables, folktales etc. will contribute towards the learning of children in a child-friendly environment. 
II-     Providing sports materials and learning kits in all the Anganwadi Centers
The Anganwadi centers do not have sports material therefore limiting the physical activities of the children. The Anganwadi intervention focuses on providing sports materials for children in all the centers so that the children remain physically active and engaged. Learning kits like worksheets, activity books etc. are provided in all the centers and teachers will be trained on usage of the learning kits.
III-     Building Learning Environment in Anganwadi centers
It is an innovative concept towards improving the physical learning environment of the centres. Its upgradation includes painting on the walls of the centers displaying basic learning concepts and key messages using the IEC material.

Objective – Improved quality service in the Anganwadi Centres 
I-    Training of Anganwadi Workers
The Anganwadi workers are trained on topics such as Child’s holistic well-being including responsive care, and early education, involving parents and the community to facilitate parent participation in the program and supporting the socio-emotional learning needs of children.
II-    Enrich delivery of State curriculum by converging audio-video module 
The state curriculum is used as the base document and made more engaging by using videos, flipcharts, etc. A customized audio-video curriculum is prepared by the team and converged with the state curriculum thereby demonstrating quality early learning activities for children attending the centers.

Objective – Improved access to education services for children and parents
I-    Quality training for parents on early childhood education
Continuous support to Anganwadi workers is given to hold orientation workshops for parents at home to improve the parent-child relationship and the environment at home.
II-    Focus on the formation and strengthening of MGs
Mothers Groups are formed and strengthened to encourage and increase their participation in the activities that are conducted regularly in the AWCs. Regular meetings are held, and MGs are sensitized to monitor the services being provided at the centers. This helps in practicing positive parenting and providing a safe learning environment at home.

Pratham Education Foundation

In the Anganwadi catchment area, mothers’ groups will be formed for all mothers of birth-3-year children, and weekly interactions will be facilitated. 

1.    Meetings will include demonstration, discussion, and practice of play-based and developmental activities, and health and safety education, by Anganwadi workers. 

Mothers will implement these practices with children at home and discuss their experiences in the subsequent meeting. 

2.    Digital content is shared with mothers via SMS and WhatsApp, and periodic community events are conducted with the help of volunteers. 
3.    Train government cadres (leadership, supervisors and frontline Anganwadi workers through a cascading model and periodic refresher training)
4.    It strengthens delivery and curriculum based on experience and evidence and institutionalizes implementation and monitoring systems.