NEW DELHI: Organisations working in the field of early childhood care have expressed concern over a wide gap between children in metropolitan cities having access to state-of-the-art "pre-school" education while over 11 million children are deprived of pre-school education through anganwadi centres.

In order to ensure a balance between the two extremes, FORCES, a network of organisations for childcare advocacy, and Plan, an international non-government organisation working in the field of child care, have launched a campaign to ensure that more and more children have access to pre-school education also put pressure on the Government to adopt a more balanced approach towards Early Child Care and Development (ECCD) Programme.

According to FORCES, out of 163 million children between the age of zero and six years, the ECCD Programme reached out to only 23 million children. And out of this, only 12.5 million children in the age group of zero to three years get to access pre-school services from anganwadis.

On the other hand, children in private pre-schools of metropolitan cities are being put under undue pressure while being kept in unrealistic surroundings.

According to FORCES National Convenor Bullu Sareen, there is a crying need to realistically set pre-school standards in the country. "It is in a state of chaos and is breeding confusion. There is a need to set uniform standards for pre-school in the country," she asserts.

It is pointed out that there was a shortfall of 10.8 lakhs anganwadi centres at the start of the financial year 2005-2006. According to a study on "Status of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)" conducted by FORCES last year, the gap between the sanctioned and operational anganwadis was also huge.

The study pointed out that while 7.5 lakhs anganwadi centres were planned to be set up under the 10th Five Year Plan and 7.4 lakh centres were already sanctioned, but only 6.49 lakhs anganwadis are functional. Anganwadi workers across several States have also been complaining of various problems, including low remuneration.

A FORCES spokesperson pointed out that while the situation across the country in this regard was grim, the private pre-schools had projected a completely different picture. There were reports about successful private pre-schools spending more than Rs. 50 lakhs a year to print brochures, calendars, gifts and advertisements in newspapers.

The spokesperson added that in some preparatory schools in Delhi, two-year-old children had been introduced to the world of computers. They are also reported to be spending Rs. 2,500 to Rs. 3,000 per child on furniture and educational tools.

Education consultant Abha Adams said very young children should ideally be left the way they were. "What is required is proper day care and better teachers to look after them. Too much emphasis on physical infrastructure is not right."

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