Increasing Choice or Inequality?

"Many new opportunities are now available to individual children, but inequities related to gender, poverty and location risk being reinforced in an increasingly market driven early childhood education system."

This working paper explores recent trends in the lives of children growing up in Andhra Pradesh, one of India's most populous states, based on Young Lives survey data collected for a sample of 1950, young children born in 2001 plus in-depth qualitative research. It is from the Bernard van Leer Foundation, a part of the Studies in Early Transitions series emerging from Young Lives, a 15-year longitudinal study of childhood poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam.

The document looks at numerous policy challenges for early education and the transition to primary school in Andhra Pradesh, "notably challenges stemming from a weakly governed pre-school sector and a primary sector that risks amplifying educational inequalities." Principle issues to be addressed are:

1. relatively high numbers of children without access to pre-school services, out of school, or dropping out of school;
2. weaknesses in delivering consistent quality through the Integrated Childhood Development Services (ICDS) programmes run by the government that include delivery of basic health and nutrition;
3. the lack of a structured and coordinated educational system; and
4. a relatively unregulated, though growing, private education sector that offers provision of both pre-school and primary education in English, including initiation of children into formal learning at a much earlier age than normally considering to be developmentally appropriate.

Though data show high sttendance rates in pre-school in both urban and rural areas: "However, these overall percentages are misleading, and disguise major differences in children’s early transition experiences. Many of these differences are shaped by the co-existence of a long established network of government anganwadis (early childhood centres under the ICDS programme), alongside a rapidly growing (relatively unregulated) private sector at both pre-school and primary levels. Poverty levels and location are strongly predictive of whether children attend government or private pre-school/primary school." Children may switch from private to government-provided schools and back depending on family finances. "As a consequence many children have to cope with multiple and fragmented transitions during their early years...”, including living with relatives or in hostels distant from the family in order to attend. “Other issues discussed in this report include the impact on children of struggling to learn in a language different to their mother tongue (in the case of tribal children and those in English medium schools); children experiencing premature exposure to academic content by starting school at an age younger than the official age of entry; and children having to cope with everyday violence in the classroom, perpetrated by their peers and teachers."

The study recommends advocating for a major reform of early childhood services, "specifically strengthening and universalising quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in Andhra Pradesh to smoothen children’s transitions to, and through, primary school." To strengthen ECCE, the ICDS programme will need:

• better funding/resources;
• a complete review of existing government-run programmes, coupled with improved training, skills, and remuneration for childcare workers, to make able to deliver a more solid early education;
• provision of developmentally appropriate educational opportunities;
• an improved educational module for the public sector;
• regulation of both government and private pre-school and primary schools in order to build an ethical and effective partnership between different providers of education;
• strong state and national governance to overcome hurdles to implementation of the recent Right to Education Act;
• development of a more comprehensive, child-centred vision for early childhood and primary education that looks beyond the structural, systematic, and resourcing issues of today’s policy agenda; and 
• integration of care, health, education, and nutrition for children aged 0-8.