Analysing the plight of India's young children: The Quality of Education they receive (ConvSDG x Rocket Learning)

Interviewing the mother of a 6 month old child.

Learning is a tool that helps change lives - it leads to some people being able to bring their family out of poverty, while also helping in their development. Unfortunately in India, most children do not have access to high-quality Early Childhood Education (ECE) due to the Anganwadi workers (workers at government-run preschools and daycare centers) tasked with imparting this knowledge not receiving adequate training.

As a part of my volunteer work with Rocket Learning, an NGO that works towards improving the quality of ECE in India, I helped conduct a survey for their new program for children between ages Zero to Three in Chandigarh, India. This program that is yet to be launched aims at focusing on children in this younger age group category. This is because, in the first three years of a child's growth, their brains are considered to be the most receptive to newer information and experiences. This increased receptiveness leads to these years being very crucial in the child's development.

This survey had questions regarding a variety of topics to get a sense of what the parents require to be able to contribute more to their child's development during these first few years. It also had a few questions to analyze the current developmental status of the child and to get feedback on the quality of the services offered under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and by the Anganwadi Centres.

During my time in Chandigarh, I conducted 10 interviews - 3 qualitative and 7 quantitative - in 4 villages that were Daria, Burail Khurd, Raipur Kalan, and Raipur Khurd. Each interview lasted around 45 minutes to 1 hour, and at the end of the day, these interviews were analyzed briefly by me. The children whose parents I interviewed were first divided into different age categories from which they were randomly sampled.

I am extremely grateful to Rocket Learning for allowing me to help in conducting interviews for their Zero to Three program. I found this experience to be an amazing one as it showed me the important role that education plays in development. It also taught me how the development of many children in India is limited because they don't have access to good quality Early Childhood Education.

I making the list of students to be interviewed on the 28th of January

PS: I was glad to see that these findings were later also discussed with experts from Harvard University and the World Bank. It is wonderful that these prestigious institutions are promoting research in the field of ECE.