The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Directorate to monitor pre-school teaching sought

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 25, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Directorate to monitor pre-school teaching sought

Staff Reporter

Call for child rights committee to monitor anganwadis

CHENNAI : An early child care and education directorate to monitor pre-school teaching in public and private schools is urgently needed, according to participants at a workshop here on Tuesday.

Early child care and education is the right of every child in the age group of 3-6, they told the workshop organised by Aide et Action. The workshop on `Education as a human right' stressed the need to regulate the curriculum and infrastructure of the pre-schools.

Representatives from the Department of Family Welfare and 20 non-governmental organisations, including TN Forces and Arivoli Iyakkam, participated in the workshop held in connection with the weeklong global campaign for education.

Speakers said the stakeholders, including teachers, government officials and parents must be sensitised to the educational rights of the disabled and the less privileged such as children of sex workers and street children. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) must also focus on higher education of the disabled.

Spastics Society of Tamil Nadu director Anne Shyam said disabled children must be mainstreamed according to skills. Teachers must be trained in inclusive education. A study of the SSA in 2006 showed that 77,000 of the 1.13 lakh disabled children in the State were mainstreamed in regular schools and about 11,000 were in special schools.

Disabled children, particularly girls in rural areas, were unable to cope with the rigid formal education system, Ms. Shyam added.

Awareness of the need to educate every special child even through home-based teaching needs to be created.

TN Forces convener K. Shanmugavelayutham said most anganwadis lacked flexible curricula and needed better infrastructure. Local bodies must be entrusted with more powers to develop the education system in their areas, he added.

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