Early child hood education in Pakistan

By Lubna Toheed

Keywords; The issue of early child education, Developmental domains in early hood, Pre-primary education statistics, curriculum of ECCE programs, Developmental domains in early hood, Policy Actions of national education policy 2009

Trend and issues early child hood education in Pakistan

Introduction:

The importance of early childhood care and development (ECCD) in general and early childhood education (ECE) in particular, is now well established. It is widely acknowledged that the effects of the kind of early care a child receives from parents, pre-school teachers and caregivers, determines how well a child learns and performs throughout his/her life. The early years are critical for the acquisition of the concepts, skills and attitudes that lay the foundation for lifelong learning. These include the acquisition of language, perception-motor skills, problem-solving skills and a love for learning.

It is during the early care that a child develops all the key elements of emotional intelligence, namely confidence, curiosity, purposefulness, self control, connectedness, the capacity to communicate and co-cooperativeness.

It is evident that it is during the crucial early years; when experience is molding the brain. The brain is never elastic again as it in the childhood, in the term of receptivity and vulnerability. Early childhood experiences are the building block of development and the child is architect of his/her own brain, piecing together the puzzle and reacting to the outside world.

Objective

·                     What is early child hood education ?

·                     Significance of early child education.

·                     Present condition of early child education in Pakistan.

·                     Problems faced by ECE in Pakistan.

·                     Recommendation for the improvement of early child education.

The issue of early child education

According to the latest Census Report (1998), the total population of  under 5-year age group in Pakistan is 18.6 million which is 14.2% of the 130.58 million population of the country.

The importance of early childhood education is now well established. It is widely acknowledged that the early care and education a child receives from parents, pre-school teachers  determines how well a child learns and performs throughout his/her life. .

It has been observed that there are very few private early childhood education schools in Pakistan. Such as Mehnaz Fatima Montessori opened in 1998 in northern area(registered in 1999 under the voluntary Social Welfare Agency Ordinance 1961), Nasra Pre-Primary School – Karachi,   Beacon House School – Hyderabad, These schools have been opened on the initiatives of some local people and they also have a commercial base. It has been observed that the school fees are so high that the parents of urban and especially of rural areas of Pakistan can not send their children to these schools. Secondly, there are government schools which ensure that the children in kachi peheli be prepared for class one. They do not look after the developmental needs of children. Therefore children are deprived of early childhood education due to expensiveness, inaccessibility (private sector) and poor quality (public sector).

Definition (ECE):

Early childhood education regards education in early childhood, one of the most vulnerable stages in life. According to the NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children), it spans the human life from birth to age eight.

The term early childhood education emphasizes the comprehensive nature of development, which takes place before the child goes to school. It is concerned with physical, linguistic, social, cognitive and educational growth of a child in its first five to six years (Baker, 1987)

Robert Myers (1992) in his book Twelve Who Survive emphasized that early childhood development is a continuous process it begins from the parental period and extends through the entire period of childhood. Therefore, Robert Myers suggests that early childhood care and education should fulfill the needs of the children from birth to eight years (Myers1985). 

Other terms that are often used interchangeably with "early childhood education" are "early childhood learning," "early care" , “child care and education,” and "early education."

Early childhood education often focuses on children learning through play. The term, "early childhood education," is often used to describe preschool or baby / child care programs.

 National definition of other ECCE :

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is defined as both formal and informal as well as public or private day care, health, nutrition, or education services for children.

National definition of ISCED 0 programs:

Early Childhood Education (ECE), termed katchi or pre-primary, is defined as both formal and informal as well as public or private education services for children aged 3-5 years.   (ISCED = International Standard Classification of Education and development)

(UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE) report 2006)

Significance

The importance of early childhood care and development (ECCD) in general and early childhood education (ECE) in particular, is now well established. It is widely acknowledged that the effects of the kind of early care a child receives from parents, pre-school teachers and caregivers, determines how well a child learns and performs throughout his/her life. The early years are critical for the acquisition of the concepts, skills and attitudes that lay the foundation for lifelong learning. These include the acquisition of language, perception-motor skills, problem-solving skills and a love for learning. With good quality early education, educational efficiency would improve as children would acquire the basic concepts, skills and attitudes required for successful learning and development prior to or shortly after entering the system, thus reducing the chances of failure; and the system, too, would be freed of under-age and under-prepared learners who have proven to be the most at risk in terms of school failure and drop-out.

Other benefits of early care and education relate to increased economic productivity over a lifetime and better standards of living when the child becomes an adult. It is also proven that intervening in the earliest years help to reduce social and economic disparities and gender inequalities that divide our society.

“Early Childhood Education confers benefits to the child’s cognitive development and better social and emotional adaptation. Neurological studies have found that children’s brain development has particularly high potential around age three, when appropriate stimulating learning environment, which can just as well be playing activity, can increase the physical size of the brain itself. In economic terms, there are long-term positive effects of ECE on employment, labour force participation and earnings. The broader social impacts include better health, lower incidence of antisocial behavior and greater civic participation. Studies estimate that ECE is a sound investment: for each dollar invested in quality early childhood education governments provides a return ranging any where from 2 to 13 dollars.”                     

  (NATIONAL EDUCATION POLICY 2009)

Developmental domains in early hood:

There are 5 mainly different developmental domains of children which all relate to each other. They are easily referred to as the SPICE of life:

·                     Social - Refers mostly to the ability to form attachments, play with others, co-     operation and sharing, and being able to create lasting relationships with others.

·                     Physical - Development of Fine (small) and Gross (large) Motor Skills.

·                     Intellectual - The process of making sense of the world around them.

·                     Creative - The development of special abilities creating talents. Music, Art, Writing, Reading, and Singing are all ways for creative development to take place.

·                     Emotional - Development of self-awareness, self-confidence, and coping with feelings as well as understanding them.

International ECE Initiatives

Historically, formal early childhood education has arisen in response to the needs of middle and upper income group of developed countries. Later on it became a part of the educational system in the Third World (Baker1987).

Early Childhood Education (ECE) began to regain prominence among policy-mkers in developing countries after the commitment to early childhood care and development activities as one of the six goals of EFA at the World Education Conference (1990).

The World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien in March 1990, adopted a Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs which included six EFA “target dimensions”, of which one was related to early childhood care and development:

“Expansion of early childhood care and development activities, including family and community interventions, especially for poor, disadvantaged and disabled children”.

The commitment was renewed, a decade later, at the World Education Forum, held in Dakar, in April, 2000. Now international community has committed itself to the attainment of the following early childhood development goal:

“Expanding and improving comprehensively early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.”

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Early child hood education in Pakistan

In Pakistan too an awakening has occurred about early childhood education. The government has also included kachi peheli and paki peheli in their educational plan. Many private organizations established preschools in various parts of Pakistan. Most of the preschools in Pakistan concentrate on the educational needs of the children and often do not address the psycho-social needs of the children.

Early Childhood Education had been well organized and formalized till seventies. Katchi or pre-primary classes were organized in the formal primary schools. However, officially this practice was almost discontinued during eighties.

After the commitment to early childhood care and development activities as one of the six goals of EFA at the World Education Conference (1990), this dimension began to regain prominence among policy-makers in Pakistan.

Realizing the role and significance of early childhood education, especially for improving the learning achievement/ competencies, provision has been made in the National Education Policy (1998-2010) to reintroduce Katchi/ preprimary class as a formal class in primary schools, extending the primary education for six years - Katchi to grade V.

“Katchi class at primary level shall be introduced as a part of the effort to improve achievements of pupils” and “Katchi class shall be institutionalized in the primary cycle gradually and progressively.”

Implementation of this policy provision has not started that time due to scarcity of resources. Pakistan's priority area were primary education (5-9 age group).

More recently, early childhood learning received a further impetus from the Dakar Framework for Action (April, 2000) which renewed the call for the expansion and improvement of early childhood care and education. In response to the Forum commitments, Pakistan developed a comprehensive National Plan of Action (NPA) for EFA, recently formulated as a long-term framework (2001-15), to be implemented in three five-year phases, with early childhood education as one of its three areas of focus; the other two being universal primary education and adult literacy.

The strategic activities outlined in the NPA to achieve the target of participation rate of 50% by 2015 include:

Ø    Policy makers, planners, managers/administrators, teachers and parents will be sensitized about the importance and significance of early childhood care and education;

Ø    Katchi class, already functional in primary schools, will be recognized and strengthened and this program will be expanded and opening of katchi classes in the public sector primary schools will be a major program for improving the access in ECE under NPA;

Ø    Adequate financial allocations for ECE will be ensured to provide the inputs proposed such as additional classroom, one teacher, audio-visual aids, teaching, learning and instructional materials;

Ø     Efforts will be made to improve coordination among the various stakeholders involved in ECE programs. District and provincial EFA Forums will be established and strengthened for the purpose;

Ø    The services of Teachers Resource Centre (TRC) Karachi will be utilized as a resource institution for providing policy and professional backup for ECE at the national, provincial and district levels;

Ø     Statistical data and other related information on core ECE indicators would be regularly collected through EMIS, PIHS and other sources for analysis and dissemination;

Ø    Full-time teachers for kachi classes will be recruited and trained;

Ø    Instructional material, teaching kit and audio-visual aids for ECE will be developed and provided – the ECE curriculum has already been developed by the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education with collaboration from the Teachers’ Resource Centre (TRC).

According to the National Plan of Action, over 40,000 ECE centers were to be established during 2001- 15, and over 3,000 ECE teachers were to be trained and recruited annually in the public sector – a total of 51,000 teachers during the period 2001-15. Teachers’ training was to be imparted in the existing Teacher Training institutions by trained ECE master trainers. The total financial requirement to meet these targets was estimated to be Rs 47.7 billion during the 15-year period.

Unfortunately, there has been no implementation of this action plan. Apart from the funds released by the federal government to the provinces for ECE under the Education Sector Reforms (ESR) in 2001/0 2- 2002/03, no specific allocations have been made in the provincial budgets for this area.

 A total amount of Rs56.94 million was released for Early Childhood Education by the Federal Government to the provinces and areas in 2001/02 as follows:

The ESR/ECE funds were spent by NWFP, Balochistan and FATA on the improvement of the “katchi” class in existing public sector schools. Besides this, there were, however, no fi nancial contributions made for ECE by the provinces, except by Punjab, indicating that provinces/areas did not consider it as a priority area in education. There were no more allocations made to ECE by the Federal Government.

(UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE) report 2006)

Pre-primary education statistics:

(Preparatory Document for the Ministerial Meeting of South Asia EFA  Forum (21-23 May, 2003)

         

           The total pre-primary-aged population (ages 3 & 4 years) declined from 8.19 million in 2001/02 to 7.18 million in 2005/06, recording an average growth rate -1.2% per annum during this period. Pre-primary enrolment (katchi) enrolments registered a remarkable average growth rate of over 9% per annum and increased from 2.97 millions to 4.39 millions.

Policy Actions of national education policy 2009:

v    Improvements in quality of ECE shall be based on a concept of holistic development of the child that provides a stimulating, interactive environment, including play, rather than a focus on regimes that require rote learning rigid achievement standards.

v    The early childhood education (ECE) age group shall be recognised as comprising 3 to 5 years. At least one year pre-primary education shall be provided by the state and universal access to ECE shall be ensured within the next ten years.

v    Provision of ECE shall be attached to primary schools, and these schools shall be provided with additional budget, teachers and assistants for this purpose.

v    For ECE teachers, a two-year specialised training in dealing with young children shall be a necessary requirement.

v    This training shall be on the basis of ECE revised national curriculum. The curriculum and support material for ECE shall take account of the cultural diversity of particular areas.

 Information concerning the curriculum of ECCE programs

v    Several NGOs have developed teaching-learning materials for ECE. These include Children’s Resource International (CRI); the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF); the Teachers’ Resource Centre (TRC) and the College of Home Economics, Lahore.

v    Various kinds of teaching and learning aids such as blocks, charts, posters, handbooks, flashcards, teachers’ guides; planners; teachers’ kits; etc. have been developed by several organizations.

v    .ECE National Curriculum has been designed in collaboration with Teachers’ Resource Centre Sindh to meet the basic needs for interaction and stimulation of children of 3-5 years age group in the formal elementary education system in Pakistan.

v    The same curriculum has been adopted by Government of Pakistan Ministry of Education (Curriculum Wing) Islamabad since August 2002 in all the Provinces.

v    Federal ECE Curriculum has also been translated into Urdu and Sindhi by Bureau of Curriculum and Extension Wing Sindh, will be followed by the Directorate of Literacy & NFE, Karachi for E.C.E. Children.  

The actual situation

Besides ESR and policy action of national education policy 2009, and introduction of ECE curriculum ,the situation is still unsatisfactory. In government schools the children below to age 5 usually sit with their old sibling, thy are not enrolled, they are not teach in separate class by separate teachers. Proper attention is not given to the development of basic skills.

In private sector schools, especially schools run on commercial basis,  pre-primary education is well organized, being an essential part of primary education. However, due to their high fees, these private schools cater only to the needs of the relatively affluent urban class, excluding a large section of the society comprising poor families. Almost all such schools arrange preprimary education in the form of Nursery, Pre-nursery or Kindergarten KG-I, KG-II classes.

In Pakistan, early childhood education suffers from a series of problems which include:

v    lack of realization and awareness about the importance of the benefits of early childhood education;

v    absence of well-defined policy, laws and rules for early childhood education;

v    lack of ECE facilities and infrastructure in schools such as separate pre-primary classroom, separate teacher; separate materials;

v    financial allocation to ECE is negligible, especially in relation to the needs of the children;

v    lack of coordination among the various government departments related to early childhood care and education and also among the different service providers such as managements of public schools; private schools; NGOs; and other related community-based organizations; and

v    provinces, district communities and schools lack the capacity to plan, implement and monitor ECE programmes.

Recommendations

The impediments faced by any organization implementing ECE program are many and diverse. Many questions arise and concerns make the whole implementation a daunting task. Questions may range from achievement of the goal of a project, expansion, budget, capacity building of the government itself, baseline data, to replicability and sustainability of all such programs at the grass root level. The key to success for any ECE program is to involve the community and the government offices in a true spirit of public-private partnership.

Some recommendations are given below:

v    Early childhood education should be a part of the educational policy of the government.

v    The government should reserve a specific grant for early childhood development in their educational plans

v    The curriculum of early childhood education should also include health and psycho-social aspects of development besides academic development of children.

v    The government should give authority to local communities for participation in the private sector to explore and to identify organizations to deliver early childhood education at local level.

v    The early childhood education institutions should be supported in effective organization and management by the government and private initiative.

v    The training centers for preschool teachers should be established to develop the abilities of teachers to conduct activity based teaching.

v    In early childhood schools, open space to play and explore should be provided. In addition a garden, water, sand play and pet animals should be available for the children. The children should be allowed to experiment in a natural environment.

v    The ministry of education should introduce a curriculum on ‘human development’ to the students of higher classes. It will give young people greater understanding of the importance of early childhood development, its consequences and their future role as parents. It could lead to better informed society.

v    The private sector should be encouraged to give priority to early childhood development.

Outcome of ECE

1.         Increase in Greater Enrollment Rate.

2.         Decrease of drop-out rate in primary education .

3.         Support Education For All- Universal Primary Education (UPE) Programme.

4.         Increase access to out-of-school children.

5.         Strengthen the base for primary / elementary education.

6.         Enhance achievement of basic learning competencies of children.

7.         Increase completion rate of primary schooling .

8.         Improving cognitive development ( thinking and reasoning).

9.         Improving social development (relationship to others).

10.       Improving emotional development (self image, security).

11.       Improving language skills.

12.       Enhance creative skills .

References

·                     Baker, W. (1987) Early Childhood Care and Education: the Challenge, Occasional Paper No 1,Hague :Bernard Van Leer Foundation

·                     Myer, R. (1992) The Twelve Who Survive. London: Routledge.

·                     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_childhood

·                     An Evaluation Study of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Pakistan; PhD Thesis of Dr Shahida Mohiuddin, ITREB- Pakistan: Retrieved 25/05/09 from:http://www.aku.edu/ied/conference2008/doc/Papers/An%20Evaluation%20Study%20of%20Early%20Childhood%20Education%20(ECE)%20in%20Pakistan%20Shahida%20Mohiuddin%20Paper.pdf

·                     Financing of education in Pakistan(2003);Preparatory Document for the Ministerial Meeting of South Asia EFA Forum (21-23 May, 2003) Retrieved 19/05/09 from: http://www.moe.gov.pk/study.pdf

·                     Pakistan Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programmes (2006) ;Compiled by: UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE) Geneva, (Switzerland) 2006, Retrieved 19/05/09 from:

 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001472/147222e.pdf

·                     National Curriculumfor ECE (2007)

·                     ECE Policy review(2008) Prepared by Federal Ministry of Education and Children’s Resources, International (CRI;retrieved 29/05/09 from: http://www.unescobkk.org/fileadmin/user_upload/appeal/ECCE/reports_and_publications/Final_Policy_Review_Report-_ECCE_pakistan.pdf

·                     National curriculum for Early Child Education,2009