In a first, NCERT develops curriculum for pre-schools, likely to be followed by 2018-19

Pre-schools in the country will now be able to follow a well-designed, fixed curriculum for teaching 3 to 6-years-old children, as the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has developed a curriculum for pre-schools to help prepare children for Class 1.

This is for the first time that a government agency will be giving a fixed curriculum for pre-schools, which otherwise do not have any fixed curriculum. The elementary education department of NCERT has been working on developing a curriculum in five centres — Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Mysore, Ajmer and Delhi.

"Our pre-school centres had been researching on developing a curriculum for pre-schools, and we are hoping to implement it by 2018-19 academic session. We will provide the curriculum to all private schools across the country," a senior official at NCERT said.

"Most pre-schools do not follow a fixed curriculum, some start with teaching alphabets and numbers to students while others only teach them to sing rhymes and play games. This new curriculum has been designed keeping in mind the cognitive and emotional level of children," he added.

The NCERT curriculum will have more of activity and less of cramming up alphabets and numbers; an exercise the experts at NCERT say will be helpful for the psychological development of the child.

The curriculum spans over two years, which could either be used for Nursery and lower KG or upper KG and lower KG — which is basically aimed at preparing children for Class 1.

So far, government schools used to admit children beginning from Class 1 but they are also working on a plan to link Anganwadis to schools to start their own pre-schools. Some states like Telangana and Rajasthan already have pre-schools, but the ministry of human resource development alongwith ministry of women and child development is working on a pan-India plan.

Ministry of Women and Child Development has developed National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) policy for children from 3-6 years of age. The policy encompasses elements of care, health, nutrition, play and early learning within a protective and enabling environment. As per the policy, there should be an age and developmentally appropriate, child-centric curriculum translated in mother tongue/local vernacular.