JOIN USThe National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will design the curriculum and prepare textbooks for pre-school education.
“Pre-school module will be prepared for its introduction next year,” NCERT director Hrushikesh Senapaty said on Friday at a function to mark the Council’s 57th foundation day.
The Council’s Art and integrated learning department would soon being the work, Senapaty added.
The initiative comes in the wake of an effort to link Anganwadi centres across the country with government schools to run Kindergarten classes with the help of Anganwadi workers.
The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) and Women and Child Development (WCD) Ministries jointly wrote to the states recently to ”attach” Anganwadi centres with primary schools.
A senior NCERT official told on the sidelines of the function that a set of pre-school modules prepared on a pilot basis by the Council has already been used by pre-schools in different parts of the country, including in Delhi.
“Based on our experience in the use of the (pilot) module, we will develop a new module,” the official said.
In a separate event, WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi released a training module titled 'Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE),' for the Anganwadi workers.
The minister announced about the module’s release at a function on Thursday, saying it would help Anganwadi workers become pre-school teachers.
“It is designed to give them a basic understanding ECCE curriculum and pedagogic approaches to ensure optimum and holistic development of children so that they are ready for school at six years,” Maneka said releasing the module.
The module also has a component on “psycho-social development of children” below three. This would help Anganwadi workers counsel parents and caregivers on early stimulation, the minister said.
“The ECCE training module is a landmark achievement since the government, for the first time ever, prepared norms for Anganwadi workers to impart pre-school education,” the WCD Minister said.
Maneka asked state governments to complete training Anganwadi workers in ECCE in a year so that the new norms can be enforced at the earliest.
Secretaries of Women and Child Development departments of different states viewed the launch on video conferencing.