Our understanding of the importance of early education stems from the fact that 85% of brain development happens before the age of eight. This fact is highlighted in the National Education Policy 2020, and is one reason for the renewed focus on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). Studies show that for a young learner’s holistic development, there needs to exist a supportive, and stimulating environment. The lack of such an enriching environment can stunt brain development.

To impact early childhood education on a large scale, Square Panda India has identified a need to impact each person responsible for imparting early learning. In effect, this includes ECCE stakeholders – parents, teachers, administrators, and other early years’ educators, leaders, and children themselves.

Every adult has to not only function as a high-quality content creator but understand the science behind early learning, and the system that comes into play as a young child begins to learn.

To further our goal of transforming the ECCE landscape in India, we adopted a three-pronged approach to develop the entire early education ecosystem; the Anganwadi workers, ECCE educators, and the children themselves. This early learning initiative, called Aarambh, holistically empowers each stakeholder through foundational learning and educator empowerment programs.

Square Panda India’s Research Into The Early Brain

Aarambh is completely research-driven, with each program interconnected. This comprehensive approach guarantees that we meet the desired learning outcomes. Knowledge of multiple crucial components of early childhood education is integrated into our programs, enhancing the development of foundational skills like cognitive development, motor skills, reasoning, and more. To impact learning outcomes holistically, we put years of neuroscience research into developing our foundational learning and educator empowerment programs. Our programs ensure every stakeholder is well-versed in the pedagogy and the neuroscience behind early learning, with a strong grasp of digital knowledge, for a well-rounded 21^st century approach to teaching-learning methodologies.

Strategic Expertise

Square Panda India has assembled a team of 100+ experts and specialists from the ECCE sector across India, including school administrators, educators, teacher trainers, counsellors, specialists in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and early education, child psychologists, technologists, game developers, and coders, whose participation and insights have proven invaluable while structuring our program curriculum.

We are constantly building our teams and ensuring we bring the most innovative ECCE programs to impact young learners and early years educators. Furthermore, we have built our teams keeping in mind regional language requirements. 

Curriculum Designing Process

STEP I: Our expert team of in-house researchers puts in deep thought and years of research while designing each module of the Square Panda India foundational learning and educator empowerment programs.

STEP II: We conducted on-ground pilots with governments and impact organisations across India to measure the efficacy of our teaching-learning programs.

STEP III: Expert on-ground teams were conscripted to assess each aspect of our programs.

STEP IV: This assessment led to the extraction of performance metrics, which were used to evaluate areas of improvement.

STEP V: Armed with analytics from our studies and field research to prove our impact, we have partnered with and continue to partner with multiple state governments and the central government to drive learning and skill development for millions of children and early years’ educators across India.

Our ‘Six-Pillar’ Approach 

Square Panda India follows a systematic approach with the following six pillars that we have identified, for a holistic change:

Pillar 1 – Goal Setting: We create a well thought out and structured plan around a common vision. We then define the program objective, its outcomes, and key measurement metrics. For greater clarity and alignment across the stakeholders, we identify and define the key responsibilities early on. Lastly, we design the program schedule, key milestones, and timelines.

Pillar 2 – Curriculum Designing: Our expert team designs our innovative curriculum, conceptualising them for India while using best global practices.  

Pillar 3 – Implementation: To bring about seamless implementation, we:

• Create a program management team comprising stakeholders from the Government, respective organisations, and Square Panda India, who create a detailed roll-out plan
• Create an on-ground team from the local community for additional effectiveness
• Implement our program

Pillar 4 – Measurement & Evaluation: Our programs are assessed periodically throughout the year to measure impact. The results are compared and presented at multiple levels – grade-wise, age-wise, skills-wise, school-wise, district-wise, and state-wise. These assessments throw light on gaps and common issues, providing actionable insights that aid in improving the subsequent program outcomes and effectiveness.

Pillar 5 – Monitoring & Accountability: Square Panda India promotes complete transparency while implementing our programs, conducting regular field visits, gathering feedback from participants, and ensuring Program Health checks are provided to stakeholders for review.

Pillar 6 – Support: We provide continuous support throughout the program by supplying end-to-end solutions, including teacher training, classroom resources like teaching-learning material, lesson plans, and performance data to help make decisions on how to help students better their learning journey.

Blending Practical With Theoretical

To transform early childhood education, and drive it to its fullest potential, we take on a holistic approach towards the development and implementation of our foundational learning and educator empowerment programs. Each aspect of our programs incorporates practical application alongside theory for better outcomes:

In Our Teams: Each member of our content and curriculum team has been chosen based on the expertise in teacher training and development, and years in ECCE. Subsequently, our content is based on their insight and in-depth practical knowledge of the early learning landscape in India.

During Implementation: Square Panda India translates our ECCE expertise and research into the field, taking a rounded approach to implementing each program. We blend practical knowledge with theory, using case studies, role plays, group games, and activities to enhance the understanding of our curriculum.

Our years of research in early childhood learning, understanding of how young minds work, and use of neuroscience-backed learnings to develop our programs, sets us apart from similar programs, making us a partner of choice.

Learn more about us: ecce.squarepanda.in

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 aims to address India’s education imperatives, and sets a strong foundation for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for future generations to thrive. The holistic development envisioned by NEP 2020 must be supported by a strong need to update conventional means of learning and adopting innovative forms, for better results. The objective of transforming existing learning culture depends on changing a mindset stemming from decades of following a traditional approach to education. However, teaching methodologies that worked in the past might not be completely applicable in the future. We need early learning providers—educators, parents, and even leaders—to change their mindset, so that children are enabled to answer the question of “how to think”, rather than “what to think”.

To help navigate these uncharted waters, implement new teaching-learning methodologies into each classroom, and see greater holistic development, we will need to update traditional methods and merge the old with the new.

Square Panda India Recommends:

• Explain The Neuroscience Behind Early Learning: A young learner is not just experiencing their first brush with schooling and education; they are also developing around 85% of their brain in the early childhood period, until the age of eight. This learning is cemented by experiences from their homes and their surroundings. ECCE educators and parents need to comprehend the neuroscience behind the early learning process and the effort it takes to develop each young learner’s brain holistically, for them to develop an appropriate sense of gravitas towards this responsibility.
• Bring Learning Into The Home: The role of parents in early childhood education is vital to improving student outcomes and the overall learning experience. Parental awareness and engagement in early schooling impacts every step of the ECCE process, and complements the measures taken by ECCE stakeholders, including educators and policymakers. Parental involvement in the minutiae of their child’s life, which includes their early education, serves to improve their learning outcomes to a greater degree. To enhance this provision and to increase the success of early childhood programs, webinars and workshops can be conducted with expert speakers enhancing awareness of new age methods of teaching, developmental milestones, appropriate learning outcomes, and more.
• Conduct Training And Empowerment Programs: The knowledge about the impact of early education must be followed by information on new-age teaching methodologies that best impact early years’ instruction. Explaining various styles of teaching is vastly different from experiencing it firsthand. A practical application of 21^st century methodologies, including experiential and play-based methods, can have a drastic effect on the minds of educators and parents alike, allowing them to relate to these techniques and put it into practice in the classroom and at home. Additionally, this training sees a stronger impact if people at all levels of the ECCE sector—leaders and policymakers, educators, and parents—are involved in these training sessions. While teachers and parents play a crucial role in ECCE, coaching leaders help turn early learning into a more fruitful experience. The system is stronger when every stakeholder is aligned with each step of the program, and is advised on the knowledge and the workings of each phase of training.
• Reflect The Changes In The Curriculum Itself: Simple activities like play, activities, and even everyday experiences form a learning base for children, adding to their knowledge in the early years. To truly see mindset changes develop across levels in the ECCE landscape, each of these new age methodologies, the change in teaching patterns, has to be reflected in the curriculum, and the NEP 2020 highlights this very fact. This adds an air of gravitas to the methods previously labelled as ‘hobbies’ or ‘pastimes’. For added knowledge, learning outcomes expected from each activity can also be highlighted across the curriculum, which can then be conveyed to homes, again linking the early learning ecosystem together.
• Adopt Partnerships With Private Entities: An August 2020 study by UNESCO states that out of the 320 million Indian children affected by school closures during the pandemic, only 37.6 million across 16 states are continuing their education. As the pandemic has taught us, adapting to changing needs is crucial to creating a learning revolution capable of transforming our ECCE sector. Increased digital penetration, and subsequently teacher training and parental awareness programs, can be effectively wrought by robust public private partnerships. This PPP model can link each part of the ECCE landscape together, ushering an era of equality and inclusivity alongside changing mindsets.

NEP 2020 will remain a visionary document if we cannot nail its implementation. The success of this hinges majorly on our success in eliminating pre-existing misconceptions and bringing about a definitive change in the minds of each ECCE stakeholder, from the outset.

Square Panda India’s educator empowerment programs work towards the goal of eliminating mindset barriers & changing perceptions of parents & school administrations towards interactive early learning techniques & methodologies. Our team of ECCE experts train Anganwadi workers and early years’ educators in the neuroscience behind early learning, new age teaching methods, effective classroom management techniques, basic digital literacy and knowledge of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and English language skills. 

Learn more about our programs here.

What Is Public-Private Partnership? 

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are collaborations between the public and private sectors with a focus on system efficiency, cost-effectiveness, innovation and accountability. In a PPP, the private sector provides infrastructure, assets and services that were otherwise provided by the Centre. An innovative idea to tap private resources, the PPP model looks at encouraging the private sector to participate in national development. We see successful examples all around us, in infrastructure, energy, communication, airports, and more.

The NEP 2020 addresses a wide range of reforms aimed at increasing enrolment and retention while making Indian education broad-based, skill-oriented and contemporary with potential to unlock a part of the demographic dividend in India. With the allowance for 100% FDI in the education sector, there have been numerous initiatives from the Centre and State governments to develop the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) landscape further.

Why Does Early Education In India Need The PPP Model? 

Currently, in India, there are around 240 million children under the age of 8 who can benefit from equitable access to good quality education. At present, we can divide them into Metropolitans, Tier 1, Tier 2, and so on. The other parts of the ECCE ecosystem, like the anganwadis, the schools, are just as many. Implementing any sort of program is not a task for a single entity to accomplish easily, whether it is a public concern or a private organisation. A public-private partnership speeds up this process, reducing the time taken. As a result, the implementation itself speeds up. The PPP model is critical to see a better and larger impact across the spectrum: young learners benefit from early implementation, it affects future learning, and the economy and future of the nation are also impacted.

As we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach to implementation, and as each state presents its own sets of challenges and opportunities, partnering with another concern, one that shares a common vision to create an increasingly literate India, is more a necessity than a want.

Strategic Advantages To Adopting The PPP Model:

Well-designed public-private partnership models can help the government effectively implement the NEP 2020’s vision. The key benefits to such a partnership would include:

• Equal Access To Quality Early Education: The focus is currently on providing quality in ECCE. A PPP model is key to fulfil goals of reduced resource wastage, lower dropout rate, and reduced absenteeism. Private edtech organisations, by their very nature, are innovative and research-driven. They are scientifically sound, flexible, and can introduce better pedagogies and stronger management techniques to early education. An effective PPP model also helps bring in marginalised sections of the society into mainstream education, fostering inclusivity and breaking geographical barriers.
• Gains From Efficiency: The private sector’s ability to specialise in certain areas equip it with added benefits. Including such partners, with highly specific skill sets, can increase the efficiency across the board, raising the funding, boosting the delivery, and heightening the development of every ECCE stakeholder (Anganwadi workers, pre-primary and primary educators, and children) in the process.
• Innovation, Technology, & R&D: Private edtech organisations, by their very nature, are innovative and research-driven. Most invest heavily in R&D, using technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to enhance their services. This technology brings the edge and innovation needed to keep costs low, improve efficiency and speed of execution.
• Targeted Focus: Private players help the government function effectively across SDGs, streamlining their focus towards a particular sub-specialisation. This helps them impact the last-mile delivery efficiently, with minimal wasted effort.
• Speed Of Implementation: Implementation is key to any structural change. The government should look towards the PPP model for faster and quality implementation of NEP 2020’s vision. PPPs can help extend the reach and effectiveness of government funds, encourage innovation in education, increase safety, efficiency, and capacity of physical educational infrastructure, and given the right public policy context, extend access to educational services and parity of services received across a population. They allow the government to maintain strategic, financial and regulatory control over public education, allowing them to step back from the day-to-day delivery and management of the infrastructure and/or service in situations where their resources are limited.
• Accountability: “The private sector is built on accountability. This is where the biggest part of the PPP model can impact early learning, by bringing accountability into the public framework, and impacting learning outcomes.”, says Square Panda India MD, Mr. Ashish Jhalani, in an excerpt from our upcoming round table discussion on ‘Role of Public Private Partnerships in Innovation and Implementation of NEP 2020’. 
  *The fourth episode of our #EarlyLearningMatters series is airing this Saturday and Sunday, only on the Times Channels.

• Effective Service Delivery: A responsive and effective service delivery framework depends on the right combination of supply and demand, alongside a robust governance framework, that can help resources flow right down to the local levels. Most private partners, especially those in early education, are always engaged in continuous improvement of their services, and believe in keeping a high quality standard, delivering programs that efficiently impact every stakeholder in the ECCE ecosystem.

Partnerships and wide scale collaborations with educationally inclined companies, foundations, and governments can bring in the necessary innovation and tools that can turn the NEP 2020 vision into a reality.

Square Panda India’s early learning initiative, ‘Aarambh’, as the name suggests, aims to holistically develop the ECCE ecosystem, which includes the Anganwadi workers, ECCE educators, and the children. Through this initiative, Square Panda India works closely with government schools, communities and organisations across the grassroots levels, to provide NEP 2020-focused foundational learning and educator empowerment programs. Aligning all the stakeholders towards a common goal, Square Panda India is dedicated to transform the Indian early learning space, by up-skilling Anganwadi workers, empowering ECCE educators, and providing foundational learning to the children.

Reasons Square Panda India Is The Perfect Partner For ECCE Development Across India:

• We are geared towards inclusive growth.
• We invest heavily in innovation and R&D.
• Our NEP 2020-aligned curriculum is designed by an in-house team of ECCE experts with a collective experience of more than 50 years in this domain.
• We upskill educators and students with technological knowledge, helping them acquire important 21st century skills.
• We facilitate impact measurement at the core of each program, for timely interventions.
• We conduct regular self-audits, allowing for course corrections.
• Each of our programs is customisable as per the state’s requirements.

An effective and well-designed public-private partnership has the potential to take teaching beyond the classrooms, and give teachers the tools to impact the child in all aspects of their lives. We at Square Panda India believe investing in PPP is a very strong strategy to accelerate development in the Indian early childhood education sector.

Young children in developmentally critical periods of their lives, between the ages of 2-10, see a much higher impact when their parents get involved in their learning. The research into parental involvement in schooling is not new; a study called “Parental Involvement in the Classroom” by Machen, Wilson, & Notar, published in 2005, revealed that enhancing the involvement of parents in the classroom goes a long way towards improving the quality of the schools in general, besides contributing to higher standards and providing opportunities for students. The study also stressed the importance of creating parent-teacher collaboration strategies to eliminate all hindrances to parental involvement in early childhood education. During the years a child’s brain is still forming connections and synapses, building a network of supportive behaviour can define the chance of said child’s future success.

How Early Learning Centres Can Encourage Parental Involvement 

Parental awareness and engagement in early childhood development and learning can strengthen the experiences from the Anganwadi centres, pre-primary schools, and primary schools. This responsiveness plays a critical role in ensuring optimal and holistic development of young learners. ECCE centres need to do their part to ensure early involvement from parents. This can occur as:

• Introduction to the anganwadi centre/pre-primary/primary school: To leverage parental support and to gain tangible outcomes, early learning centres can showcase their internal infrastructure and personnel, to pinpoint the people and places responsible for turning their little ones into responsible citizens. This increases the level of engagement, and the solidarity from parents. 
• Develop an understanding of the curriculum: The comprehension that the early years’ education can build the foundations of lifelong learning in children needs to be cemented in the parents’ minds. A parent who understands the need for early learning, and knows what their child is working on in school, has a better sense of their child’s competency and areas of improvement.
• Acquainting parents with teaching methodologies: “If parents themselves don’t understand the (early learning) program and program components, it is very difficult for them to provide their support” was just one of the sentiments expressed in our second educative #EarlyLearningMatters session, as we spoke about the importance of parental resources. 

*Watch the episode here, and join us on 13th and 14th February for another educational session on the ‘Role of Public Private Partnerships in Innovation and Implementation of NEP 2020’.

Harnessing this particular hidden resource involves explaining the teaching methodology undertaken and the philosophy behind the methods followed. This step is aimed at increasing parental knowledge about new age methods of teaching, developmental milestones, appropriate learning outcomes, and more.

For example: Square Panda India’s teaching-learning programs involve an introduction to play-based and activity-based learning, the adoption of which we believe impacts early learning outcomes to a great extent. 

• Building a connection between school and home: Extending the classroom experience to the home, by expanding the curriculum to involve home-based play-and-learn activities, can establish a connection between classroom learning and real-life experience. Additionally, this connection supports further learning, acquisition of key skills, and promotion of school-readiness, resulting in a lower drop-out rate.
• Encourage active parental participation: Schools can request parents to be more involved in their children’s progress, through volunteering programs, regular parent-teacher meetings, hosting special events for parents, inviting them to share their expertise and talents, and more. Schools can also make useful resources available to the parents, to increase their intervention and help them feel more engaged in their child’s education.

Square Panda India has always taken steps to ensure parental awareness as we teach, knowing that parental involvement is a key ingredient in raising the quality of ECCE provision. Building a program like Aarambh is not effective without strong support from parents and families. We recognise the role parents play in ECCE and work towards enlightening educators with the same level of understanding. Our educator empowerment programs include explaining the importance of parents in the ECCE ecosystem and in collaborative learning.

Children learn better if their parents are actively involved in their education. Parents serve as a critical partner to educators in the ECCE landscape. When early learning facilitators are able to work together with the parents, we will be able to build a successful network of learning, allowing our students to develop holistically.

Learn more about how Square Panda India’s educator empowerment programs change the way we approach the parental involvement aspect of early learning, at ecce.squarepanda.in