Effective early childhood care can go a long way in improving learning outcomes

nA child is said to be the most vulnerable as well as most responsive in the first five years of life. Therefore, these years are considered crucial for the proper growth and development of a child.

No wonder, more countries are promoting their parents to enrol their children, three and under, for preschool. But the trend is more popular in developed nations, where 86 percent kids get this opportunity, as compared to low income countries, where hardly nineteen percent kids attend preschool.

According to a recent report— A World Ready to Learn—by UNICEF, many young children are not developmentally on track at the time they enter primary school because of scarce investment in preschool education. UNICEF’S analysis found that “attending an early childhood education programme is one of the strongest predictors for supporting a child’s readiness for school, regardless of household or national income level”.

I am all for foundation learning of a child. Many researches show that children are more successful in school and beyond if they are given a strong foundation in the earliest years of their lives. Experiences during early childhood shape biological and psychological structures and functions.

Medically too, a human baby has over 100 billion nerve cells in their brains. A child learns when these nerve cells connect with each other through synapses. Scientists say that by the age of 5, 90% of the brain’s capacity has already developed.

So, a child’s brain is more receptive to learning during the first five years of his life than at any other point in time. The more you exercise different areas of the brain in the early years of development, the more lasting an impact it will have on their learning ability.

The science of early childhood and its long-term consequences have generated political momentum to improve early childhood development.

These advances have made it urgent that a framework to provide proper early childhood care—which includes nutrition, social security, vaccination, exposure to variety of stimulus for brain development—is developed and sustained.

We need to invest in developing standardised measurement tools, making a databank at the population level, and improving the country’s capacity to collect, analyse and use relevant data to form child-centric policies and make informed investments in early childhood.

During the past few decades, our entire focus was on the primary education of children between the age of 6 to 14 years. Though we were able to bring almost 100 percent children to schools, we failed to look at a child’s development holistically, forgetting that a child needs interventions beyond education.

Thankfully, the new education policy draft seems to take this fact into account when it proposes to restructure the present 10+2 education structure into a 5+3+3+4 structure, in which the first five years, starting at 3-years of age, are defined as foundational stage. Once the foundation skills are acquired by a child, the next two to three years will be spent on the development of those skills. Indeed, the draft policy’s emphasis on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is a step in the right direction.

I believe, it will help improve learning outcomes among children, a problem the country has been trying to solve for long. Several

researches across the world stress upon the need to expose children to various flexible environments to stimulate their logical thinking, hence improving their cognitive abilities. Besides, it can help in dealing with some of the vulnerability stemming from adversity such as poverty and offer a strong solution to break intergenerational cycles of inequity.

We can certainly address the need for early education with political will and increased investment in early childhood. We need to synergise our health and education sectors. Such intersectoral collaboration is crucial in ensuring that every child receives the nurturing care that will allow them to reach their full developmental potential.

If we want to grow as a country we need to keep our strategies around the most disadvantaged kids.

Education and health are integral to human capital development. And we need to build on that.

The author is former CEO, HCL Technologies and Founder Chairman, Sampark Foundation