Page 6 - EW December 2023

From the
Editor

THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT MAGAZINE

Volume X XIV No.12

BOARD OF ADVISORS I
N.R. Narayana Murthy, H.V. Gowthama, Shukla n the hearts and minds of your editors, early childhood care and
Bose, Dr. Glenn Christo, Dr. R. Natarajan education (ECCE) of youngest children under five years has a special
(Bangalore); Adi Godrej, Dr. Augustine Pinto, place. Since 2010 when we staged the country’s first national/inter-
Guilherme Vaz, Ketan Gala, Kirit Mehta, Balkishan
Sharma (Mumbai); Dr. Ramdas Pai (Manipal); national ECCE conference in Mumbai and simultaneously introduced
Prof. Geeta Kingdon (Lucknow); Rajiv Desai, Dr. the EducationWorld India Preschool Rankings (EWIPR) to awake
Parth Shah, Jeroninio Almeida, Premchand Palety
(Delhi); Dr. Kannan Gireesh (Chennai); Robindra educationists and society to the critical importance of ECCE, we have emerged
Subba (Kurseong); Sanjeev Bolia (Kolkata); Dr. as the country’s most strident advocates of universal professionally provided
Achyuta Samanta (Bhubaneswar); Shyama Thakore ECCE. And we have the satisfaction of moving the needle of public policy on
(London)
this issue.
EDITOR Perhaps as a response, the high-powered Dr. K. Kasturirangan Commit-
Dilip Thakore
tee strongly recommended universal professionally administered ECCE for all
MANAGING EDITOR children countrywide. Therefore the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
Summiya Yasmeen
has mandated compulsory early years education for all children in the age
CHIEF SUB-EDITOR group 3-6 under the new 5+3+3+4 school system which replaces the decades-
Sundar Anand old 10+2 schooling system, by tagging on three years of ECCE to primary
Paromita Sengupta, Reshma Ravishanker, Gopi schooling and renaming it Foundational Stage learning. The NEP policy docu-
Chand N, (Bangalore), Autar Nehru (Delhi)
9868256512, Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) ment acknowledges that since children’s brains are 80 percent developed by
9836491981, Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) age six, they need stimulation and growth from early years. And this official
9500506102
acknowledgment and initiative has come not a day too soon because according
CHIEF EXECUTIVE to UNDP data, 48 percent of India’s children below age 5 are severely mal-
Bhavin Shah +91 9867382867
nourished and in danger of stunting.
MARKETING While an estimated nine million children aged below five receive profes-
Vice President — Sales: Tejas Pattni 9022487997 sional ECCE in 300,000 privately-promoted pre-primary schools, the coun-
West: Aasana Jain 9820319127
South: Poonam Shah 9731966373 try’s 1.34 million government promoted anganwadis — essentially nutrition
North: Hannan Ahmed 9810302768 centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide rudimentary
E-mail: marketing@educationworld.in
ECCE — accommodate only 80 million of the country’s 164 million children
GRAPHICS under age five. This means that 84 million infants are totally bereft of pro-
Chandrashekar L. fessionally provided ECCE. Deprived the foundation of essential early years
Kotresh Y
education, these children suffer poor learning outcomes all along the educa-
SUBSCRIPTIONS tion continuum and serve as low-end manual labour through their adult lives,
Mithun Jadhav: 9108225694/
080 43711141 a colossal loss of productive human resource.
sub@educationworld.in Against this dismal backdrop, it’s reassuring that NEP 2020 even if belat-
ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION: RS.1700 edly, has accorded, high importance to universalisation of professionally
OVERSEAS SUBSCRIPTION: USD95 delivered ECCE. But it’s a moot point whether this mandate will be backed
Cheques/drafts in favour of DT Media & by greater budgetary allocation for anganwadis. Meanwhile refreshingly, the
Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. Bangalore
number of preschools ranked in our annual EWIPR has grown exponentially
EDITORIAL from 100 in 2010 in six cities to 661 in 17 cities. Moreover since the vast ma-
C3-36, 3rd Floor, Devatha Plaza
131 Residency Road, Bangalore 560 025. jority of children are dependent on much-neglected anganwadis, we have also
Tel: 080 22480880; Fax: 2227 5962; rated and ranked model centres in three metro cities.
E-mail: editorial@educationworld.in We hope our elaborate league tables evaluating the country’s best pre-
Printed and published by Dilip Thakore on behalf schools in 17 cities where there is greater awareness of vital, professionally
of DT Media & Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. administered ECCE will prompt the powers that be to raise standards in
Printed at Rajhans Enterprises, 134, 4th Main, In- anganwadis under all parameters of pre-primary education.
dustrial Town, Rajajinagar, Bangalore-44. Published
at C3-36, 3rd Floor, Devatha Plaza, 131 Residency
Road. Bangalore 560 025.
Editor Dilip Thakore.
RNI No. KARENG/1999/00234
Website: www.educationworld.in

6 EDUCATIONWORLD DECEMBER 2023