Early Childhood Care And Education

Early Childhood Care and Education(ECCE) is considered to be crucial intervention for providing an enabling and stimulating environment to the child to ensure a sound foundation for both lifelong learning and development.ECCE contributes significantly to improvement in enrolment, retention, participation and learning level of children in formal schooling. The need for meaningful ECCE programme has been emphasized in the National Policy on Education (1986) and Programme of Action (POA, 1992) in India .The significance of ECCE has also been confirmed in the National Plan of Action (2005) and the National Curriculum Framework (NCF),2005 at national level and the Global Monitoring Report of UNESCO (2007) at international level. The NCF-2005 suggests that young children should be provided with care, opportunities and experiences that lead to all round development-physical, social, mental, emotional and school readiness.The book outlines poor quality of early childhood education in government schools of Odisha in India.