School-readiness Among the Underprivileged: The Neglected Dimension

In the Indian context, the problem of the high proportion of out-of-school underprivileged children as well as the learning deficits in many such children in primary schools have raised concerns. Preparing these children for their journey through schooling has therefore been under the spotlight. The national Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) policy recognises pre-school education (PSE) of these children as one priority area. Given that the increased privatisation of pre-schooling marginalises a large section of underprivileged children in rural India, the role of public pre-schools always remains significant. Although many pre-primaries in government and aided schools contribute to the PSE of these children, the public pre-school system at community level in the form of anganwadi centres (AWCs) under the national Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme remains the most viable and cost-effective opportunity for a high proportion of these children. This article examines the state of the PSE at AWCs through the lens of coverage, mechanisms of service delivery, quality of learning opportunities and inclusiveness. The paper draws evidence largely from a sample survey covering 4,800 households and over 200 AWCs spread across 192 villages in three sample states, besides other macro-level data and relevant literature on PSE. The findings show that the implementation of PSE through AWCs does not comply with many ECCE norms. There is a lack of targeted PSE interventions for learning opportunities and developing socio-emotional skills. Among other factors, functioning of AWCs for less than the stipulated duration in a day, inadequate earnestness among AWC workers and unequal opportunities even in scarce PSE services adversely affect the PSE of underprivileged children. The article calls for increasing the efficiency of this largest public pre-school system through professional development of service providers and setting up monitoring mechanisms to ensure school-readiness of underprivileged children.