Union Minister Smriti Irani to host national event with 800 ICDS workers today, launch Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi

The programme will also be addressed by WCD MoS Munjpara Mahendrabhai, WCD Secretary Indevar Pandey, Sanjay Kaul, former secretary, Department of School Education, Karnataka government, and Chairperson of the ECCE Task Force of the ministry.

The ministry will also discuss best ECCE practices from Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.

“The main objective of the event is to highlight the criticality of focusing on early childhood care and education. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is launching “Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi, a pathbreaking ECCE program to ensure that India has the world’s largest, universal, high-quality preschool network, as suggested by the National Education Policy,” said a ministry statement.

Participants will discuss key initiatives to extend capacity-building support to Anganwadi workers for transforming the Anganwadi into a centre of preschool learning.

Close to 13.9 lakh operational Anganwadi centres across the country are providing supplementary nutrition and early care and education to around 8 crore beneficiary children under the age of 6 years, making it the largest public provisioning of such services in the world. Considering global evidence on 85 per cent of brain development being achieved by the age of six years, the Anganwadi eco-system becomes a critical access point for building our children’s base, in order to secure their future, says a ministry statement.

The scheme will target children’s development in every domain mentioned in the National Curriculum Framework, including physical and motor development, cognitive development, socio-emotional-ethical development, cultural/artistic development, and the development of communication and early language, literacy, and numeracy. All States will follow the national ECCE task force recommendations for a play-based, activity-based learning pedagogy, targeted specifically at developmental milestones of 0-3-year olds as well as 3-6-year olds, including special support for Divyang children.

Through the changes introduced by the “Poshan bhi, Padhai bhi” ECCE policy, every child will be provided with at least two hours of high-quality preschool instruction on a daily basis, the ministry said.

As stated in the NEP, Anganwadi Centres will be strengthened with high-quality infrastructure, play equipment, and well-trained Anganwadi workers/teachers Poshan bhi Padhai bhi will “focus on promoting holistic and quality early stimulation and pre-primary education for children, ensuring the use of developmentally appropriate pedagogies and emphasising the links with primary education as well as early childhood health and nutrition services”.

Poshan Bhi, Padhai Bhi program will provide for the mother tongue as primary teacher instruction medium, different types of teaching-learning material (visual aids, audio aids, audio-visual and bodily-kinesthetic aids) to Anganwadi Sewikas, and help build a Jan Andolan, to involve communities in strengthening of the services.