Core Academics
Early Childhood Care and Education: The Foundation of Learning
The learning process for a child commences immediately at birth. Evidence from neuroscience shows that over 85% of a child’s cumulative brain development occurs prior to the age of 6, indicating the critical importance of developmentally appropriate care and stimulation of the brain in a child’s early years to promote sustained and healthy brain development and growth.
Excellent care, nurture, nutrition, physical activity, psycho-social environment, and cognitive and emotional stimulation during a child’s first six years are thus considered extremely critical for ensuring proper brain development and consequently, desired learning curves over a person’s lifetime.
It is recognized that investment in ECCE gives the best chance for children to grow up into good, moral, thoughtful, creative, empathetic, and productive human beings.
From 3 to 6 years of age, ECCE includes continued healthcare and nutrition, but also crucially self-help skills (such as “getting ready on one’s own”), motor skills, cleanliness, the handling of separation anxiety, being comfortable around one’s peers, moral development (such as knowing the difference between “right” and “wrong”), physical development through movement and exercise, expressing and communicating thoughts and feelings to parents and others, sitting for longer periods of time in order to work on and complete a task, and generally forming all-round good habits.
ECCE during these years also entails learning about alphabets, languages, numbers, counting, colours, shapes, drawing/painting, indoor and outdoor play, puzzles and logical thinking, visual art, craft, drama, puppetry, music, and movement.
It is important that children of ages 3-8 have access to a flexible, multifaceted, multilevel, play-based, activity-based, and discovery-based education.
An educational framework for 3-8 years old (Foundational Stage) – intended for parents as well as for Anganwadis, pre-primary schools, and Grades 1 and 2 – consisting of a flexible, multilevel, play-based, activity-based, and discovery-based system of learning that aims to teach young children alphabets, numbers, basic communication in the local language/mother tongue and other languages, colours, shapes, sounds, movement, games, elements of drawing, painting, music, and the local arts, as well as various socio-emotional skills such as curiosity, patience, teamwork, cooperation, interaction, and empathy required for school-preparedness.
The framework would also include suggestions regarding exercises, puzzles, colouring books, connect-the-dots drawings, stories, rhymes, songs, games, etc. that would help in developing children in the Foundational Stage in a holistic way.
Children learn languages most quickly during the period of 0-3 years and during the Foundational Stage of 3-8 years and because learning languages is an extremely important aspect of children’s cognitive development-a key part of the Framework will be aimed at instilling excellent multilingual skills in children as early as is possible and developmentally appropriate.
The numerous rich traditions of India over millennia in ECCE, involving art, stories, poetry, songs, gatherings of relatives, and more, that exist throughout India must also be incorporated in the curricular and pedagogical framework of ECCE to impart a sense of local relevance, enjoyment, excitement, culture, and sense of identity and community.
