Research has demonstrated how literacy and numeracy are intrinsically tied to future learning and success. Closer to home, the India Early Childhood Education Impact (IECEI) study conducted by the ASER Centre and the Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development (CECED) clearly showed that exposing children to high-quality early education, i.e., basic reading, math, and developmental skills, improves their learning ability in early primary classes.

Unfortunately, acquisition of foundational skills is inadequate across India, to the extent of being a learning crisis, reports the National Education Policy 2020. The ASER 2019 report paints a grim picture. 

• Only 34.8% of std. 2 and 50.8% of std. 3 students could read std. 1 level text
• 51.4% of std. 2 and 66% of std. 3 students could do single digit oral subtraction problems, placing them substantially behind the education curve

A strong education has far-reaching effects on society, including ensuring economic prosperity, and societal well-being. Research studies over the years concur with this, with research conducted by John Bynner and Sam Parsons highlighting the importance of literacy and numeracy skills for gaining and retaining employment. 

How Square Panda India Impacts Foundational Learning In India: Case Study Findings

As Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) experts and innovators, we have been working with multiple state governments and impact organisations to show the efficacy of our foundational learning and educator empowerment programs under Aarambh.

Our studies demonstrate encouraging trends to support the efficacy and use of Square Panda India’s teaching-learning programs with a large number of educators, Anganwadi workers, and children.

Study 1: CHHATTISGARH SCHOOLS

• We started our intervention in 7 schools from grades 1-5, with students who do not have access to education outside their classrooms and had never gone to Anganwadis. 
• Before our intervention, reading and comprehension were the weakest skills, with a majority of the students not having even the slightest exposure to the English language. 
• We trained teachers to effectively use our program in the classroom, providing constant support as we introduced our early reading app to the children. 
• At the end of five weeks with our SquareTales app, word reading skills had improved by over 300%, and sentence reading skills had improved by over 125%. Notably, children could use their learnings to read newer words and sentences.

“The intervention by our foundational program worked so well that a child with no prior knowledge of English could read the first five SquareTales books when he was taught only till book 2.” – Ashish Jhalani, MD, Square Panda India

Study 2: AKANKSHA FOUNDATION 

• We conducted trials with SKG and Grade 1 students across Mumbai and Pune with this non-profit organisation across four months. 
• By the end of the study, there was an overall improvement of 32% in SKG and 128% in Grade 1. 
• There was considerable improvement in literacy outcomes & different skills like Alphabet Knowledge, Letter Sound Knowledge, Word Decoding, Spelling, and Sentence Reading. 
• We saw that the students had become much more confident and interested in learning. 
• They could independently use tablets, leading to digital literacy in students.

Study 3: MUNICIPAL CORPORATION OF GREATER MUMBAI (MCGM) 

• This six-week program with grade 2 students showed significant progress in early literacy skills among the control group, without any external intervention. 
• After using our program 4-5 times a week, for 15 minutes a day, we observed an improvement of 75% in reading skills.

Study 4: SITAPUR AND CHITRAKOOT DISTRICTS IN UTTAR PRADESH

• These progressive districts signed up with Square Panda India to conduct a comprehensive Empowerment & Enrichment Program for ECCE Educators for primary grade teachers in government schools. 
• After our 60-hour training program, post-program assessment showed a 47.83% increase in understanding of teaching methodology, a 44.38% improvement in classroom management skills, and a 43% increase in knowledge of ECCE and its varied facets.

Study 5: UPSKILLING PROGRAM WITH A SOUTHERN STATE (ONGOING) 

• To adequately equip these crucial frontline workers, Square Panda India is partnering with a southern state to deliver an intensive program for Anganwadi workers. 
• This program will be conducted physically, covering six extensive core modules, and will include practical hands-on activities like role-playing and group discussions for additional comprehension.

Armed with continuous research in pedagogy as well as our product, Square Panda India is confident in its ability to adopt best practices from global markets, while streamlining our programs under Aarambh to cater to the early education system in India in alignment with the NEP 2020 goals. For us, this is an extension of our commitment to overcome the challenge of preparing our teachers for early childhood education and our children for the future. 

Learn more at 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

The early years are the most crucial period of brain development, research shows. In this time frame, young learners need to be introduced to essential life skills like cognitive reasoning, socio-emotional development, motor skills, foundational literacy and numeracy, and more, to enhance their future success, as well as impact the future of the entire nation.

The revolutionary National Education Policy released in June 2020 reviewed the definition of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), stating, “ECCE ideally consists of flexible, multi-faceted, multi-level, play-based, activity-based, and inquiry-based learning, comprising of alphabets, languages, numbers, counting, colours, shapes, indoor and outdoor play, puzzles and logical thinking, problem-solving, drawing, painting and other visual art, craft, drama and puppetry, music and movement”.

According to NCERT data, only 14% of the Indian classrooms utilize teaching materials beyond the content-heavy textbooks. With the new direction as the NEP 2020 envisions, there is a need to go beyond the existing rote learning method and move towards a more experiential learning approach in teaching and learning methodologies. Educators are now required to change their mindset, while the conventional curriculum, assessments, and teaching practices get transformed into a more NEP-aligned position. In a country where traditional forms of learning have been prevalent such as writing on a blackboard and reading from the textbook, or ‘rote learning’, teachers will now have to adapt to a new way of teaching which is more hands-on, experiential & inquiry-based.

How We Expect Experiential Learning Methods To Help

Young children learn best with play and activities where they are given opportunities to explore their equipment, surroundings, or techniques to resolve and respond to situations effectively. Experiential learning promotes interest, aptitude and cognitive development, and departs ways from rote learning especially during the primary years of education. Usage of various resources such as flashcards, puppets, story books, etc., to engage the early learners has the desired effect of increasing engagement, retention, and enjoyment of learning too. 

To help educators impart instruction that cleaves away from the traditional practices and incorporate new age (read: 21st century) skills, there exists a need to provide training in how to adapt experiential methods in the class, how to wield technology effectively, and what happens in a child’s brain as they start to learn. Classrooms will benefit from using a blended model of learning, including a strong emphasis on AI and ML-driven learning, which can not only help scale efforts to suit needs of various states, but can even be personalised to individually impact each learner.

Square Panda India’s Teaching-Learning Model

Foundational Learning Program: Square Panda India’s interactive model, combined with storytelling pedagogy are aimed towards developing a real understanding of the subject in question, rather than focusing on rote learning, which aligns with the policy’s goal to teach children ‘how to learn’. Our methodologies align to the unique needs of each child, enhancing their learning outcomes.

Educator Empowerment Program: Our unique training programs:
– The Anganwadi Workers Upskilling Program
– Empowerment & Enrichment Program for ECCE Educators  

work towards empowering early years’ educators-Anganwadi workers, pre-primary and primary teachers-to help them develop holistically, and in turn, impact their students’ learning and development.Early learning experts have always emphasised the importance of deep comprehension of deep meaning over recollection of facts. “Learning cannot happen by memorisation. We have to put what we learn in context of real life, to actually learn,” says Square Panda India MD, Ashish Jhalani, in the very first edition of our educational #EarlyLearningMatters series of panel discussions. Watch session #3, this Saturday and Sunday, only on the Times channels.

A fast-paced world demands academic improvement, and the Indian educational landscape can fare much better when traditional learning is updated with experiential teaching and learning techniques. 

We at Square Panda India are excited to see the changes our Aarambh program can bring to the ECCE ecosystem, with our experiential and innovative programs. Learn more about us: ecce.squarepanda.in

Early childhood care and education (ECCE) aims at the holistic development of a child’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs in order to build a strong foundation for lifelong learning and wellbeing. ECCE is the pathway to nurture caring, capable and responsible future citizens.

Research shows us that the critical period of brain development, almost 85%, happens before young learners reach the age of six. To build a better foundation for future success, these early years need to be supported by a stimulating and enabling environment. 

For the well-rounded development of each child across the heartland of India, we need to recognise and acknowledge the various key stakeholders of this environment or ecosystem: 

– The Anganwadi workers, who prepare the child.
– The primary and pre-primary educators, impart this new age education
– The children themselves
*Read our article on Anganwadis, here.

Square Panda India is looking to bring about a systemic change in the ECCE landscape in India by introducing Aarambh, an early learning initiative to holistically impact the ECCE ecosystem in India, which comprises the Anganwadi workers who prepare the children for schooling, the ECCE educators who impart new age education, and the children themselves. As a part of this commitment, we have created NEP 2020-aligned foundational learning and educator empowerment programs that holistically empower each part of this ecosystem. We believe empowering anganwadi and balwadi workers, along with ECCE educators, will drive early childhood education in India to new heights, creating a truly self-reliant nation. To spread awareness about various crucial topics related to early education, we have planned a series of round table discussions with early childhood education experts, on the theme—EarlyLearningMatters. 

Watch our 2nd panel on the ‘The literacy & numeracy conversation must begin from Anganwadis and Balwadis’, right here, and stay tuned to our social media for news on upcoming discussions.

India has one of the largest education systems in the world, providing learning to more than 260 million students with around 1.5 million schools. Most of these schools depended on traditional methods of teaching and learning in the classroom, until the COVID pandemic pushed us to revise our existing techniques. 

The blended learning model, defined as ‘a style of education in which students learn via electronic and online media as well as traditional face-to-face teaching’, was seen in some classrooms across the globe, but had experienced little popularity in India. With the migration of classrooms into the digital learning space, and in the interest of further boosting the education sector, the Ministry of Education has mandated blended classrooms as a new method of teaching and learning. Apex educational bodies in India like NCERT & CBSE have already announced their intentions of implementing a hybrid system of schooling with blended learning post the lockdown.

We at Square Panda believe this move towards a blended classroom will benefit learners across India, particularly young learners.

Here are our expert suggestions for setting up successful blended learning models in classrooms across states, divided as per stages:

PLANNING STAGE

• Redefined Educators’ Roles: Educators, particularly anganwadi workers (add link to anganwadi blog post) and primary educators, are the lifeblood of the teaching learning process. In the new blended model, each educator will play a new role with enhanced skill requirements. To see successful implementation, each educator from the ground up has to be trained in 21st century skills, to understand the neuroscience behind early learning and to enable holistic development of children.
• Restructure Curriculum: The existing curriculum needs to be reworked to adopt the NEP 2020 vision of experiential learning in a blended classroom. A flexible design, with multi-platform availability to reach even the most remote of areas, is a good start towards standardisation of education, ensuring no child is left behind.
• Factor In The Digitally Deprived Learners: The NEP 2020 addresses this concern, by concluding that, “the benefits of online/digital education cannot be leveraged unless the digital divide is eliminated through concerted efforts, such as the Digital India campaign and the availability of affordable computing devices. It is important that the use of technology for online and digital education adequately addresses concerns of equity.” Not every child will have access to digital tools necessary to make blended classrooms a success, and if they do, internet connectivity can pose a problem. It would be more effective to take these challenges into account at the planning stages itself, and work with tools and aids that provide easy-to-access offline content which can reach learners even in the heartlands without any trouble.
• Private + Public Collaborations: The ed-tech sector in India is booming, as evidenced by an Omidyar Network India & RedSeer Report, which estimates that by 2022, the K-12 ed-tech market in India will be worth USD 1.7 billion. This trend can be used to the government’s advantage. Partnerships and wide scale collaborations with educationally inclined companies and foundations can bring in the necessary innovation and tools that turn the NEP 2020 vision into a reality. 

IMPLEMENTATION STAGE

• Retraining Educators: Every educator involved in ECCE needs retraining to acquire new-age skills that will help them optimise technology at the ground levels, for better teaching and learning experiences. The training must involve the currently envisioned pedagogy, keeping in mind the young learners’ educational needs. Again, NEP 2020 recognises this, adding value to content creation by teachers themselves, adding that they need to be trained and equipped with digital knowledge to be able to create online content modules with ease.
• Using Aids & Tools: Adopting blended learning models in classrooms across states would be easier with digital tools, to aid with implementation and future hand holding and support, for workers at all levels. 

REVIEW STAGE

• Pilot Studies: Administrators can test the efficacy of programs and plans to be used in their blended learning program with a scaled down group, as a precursor to a complete roll-out. These results can be used for continuous improvement, to decide on the preferred forms of e-content, areas of challenge, and more.
• Different Blended Learning Modes To Suit Requirements: Face-to-face interactive learning sessions are extremely crucial to the success of blended learning classrooms, and need to be factored into the program structure, after the planning and implementation process. As states are armed with suitable knowledge about the extent of implication blended learning has on overall outcomes, they can suitably identify different modes of blended learning to suit each subject, classroom, district, and state. 

While the recent pandemic pushed the Indian education system to adapt to a new way of learning, we saw a new beginning with more opportunities to bring in equality to learning. There is a need to seize this chance, making a concerted effort to impress the need for blended classrooms and learning across our country.

India has always been ahead of the curve, setting up schemes for early childhood development while the rest of the world was just talking about it, says Arjan de Wagt, UNICEF India’s cross-sectoral coordinator for early childhood development. The Indian government’s department of social welfare launched the National Policy for Children in 1974, which highlighted India’s commitment to “provide adequate services to children, both before and after birth and through the period of growth, to ensure their full physical, mental and social development.” A year later, in 1975, India launched its Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme, with the help of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). One of the largest and most unique integrated early childhood programs in the world, the goal of ICDS was to help feed, educate, and care for vulnerable kids and their mothers. 

ICDS services were offered through a network of anganwadis spread out across every region in India. According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, every urban or rural community of 400 to 800 people has at least one anganwadi center. In each anganwadi centre, an anganwadi worker takes care of women and children, educates the community, and collects health and nutrition data on women and children. Data from 2017 states that anganwadis delivered preschool services to close to 33 million children.

Presently, official government data shows there are 13.77 lakh anganwadi centres operational in India, with a strength of 12.8 lakh workers and 11.6 lakh helpers. Each anganwadi worker is assigned to approximately 250 homes; this worker knows everything about her community-which family requires prenatal help, which household requires a supply of vitamins, how many homes have young learners, and how old each of them is. These are the people taking care of early education, nutrition, and health in rural areas. Anganwadi workers are connected to the community, to the parents, the children, in a way no other educator is.

Anganwadi centres face a host of challenges-multiple responsibilities of which early childhood education is only one, overpopulation leading to an unfavourable teacher-pupil ratio, crumbling infrastructure, among other problems-and still, anganwadi workers find ways to beat the odds and support their charges at all costs. *Read examples of how anganwadi workers (and other educators) are helping prevent a learning loss during the pandemic, here.

Anganwadi centres are the lifeblood of the rural educational landscape in India and can sometimes be the only foundation for learning these children will ever get.

Acknowledging the worth these centres bring to early education, food, and nutrition, The Women and Child Development Ministry, under whose jurisprudence the anganwadis fall under, plans to upgrade services and facilities at 2.5 lakh anganwadi centres over five years under the Saksham Anganwadi Scheme, according to an Economic Times report dated December 2019. 

The NEP 2020 too, recognised the anganwadi’s contribution, mentioning, “To prepare an initial cadre of high-quality ECCE teachers in Anganwadis, current Anganwadi workers/teachers will be trained through a systematic effort in accordance with the curricular/pedagogical framework developed by NCERT.“

What Can We Do To Support Anganwadis To Improve The Quality Of Education?

• Support from multiple levels/stakeholders: The anganwadi centres don’t exist in silos; they are an intrinsic part of the community and must be treated as such. Strong guidance and backing are required across all levels, starting from the homes and moving up to the policymakers. There is a need to understand each problem these centres face, address each one, and work on plans and schemes to improve the quality in each anganwadi.
• Develop their skills through training programs: To ensure better outcomes across anganwadi centres, it is imperative that these catalysts of change are exposed to holistic development programs. Take Square Panda‘s Anganwadi Workers Upskilling Program, for instance, which empowers them with knowledge of ECCE and methods to create a conducive learning environment, to make children school ready and transform the anganwadi centre to their fullest potential. Our trainers can even teach in multiple vernacular languages for optimal understanding.
• Create a more comprehensive support system using AI and ML: Technology can be wielded to develop tools and aids to reduce anganwadi workers’ burden. Problems and queries can be dealt with quickly and expertly, using multilingual applications that connect anganwadi workers with early learning experts.
• Develop the centres themselves: A positive experience in these centres could translate into a journey into formal schooling, thereby improving their futures. At present, many anganwadis suffer from a lack of essential architecture and resources, making them less inviting to impressionable young minds. Recognising the worth of developing these centres, the NEP 2020 has mentioned in its policy a plan to strengthen anganwadis with “high-quality infrastructure, play equipment, and well-trained Anganwadi workers/teachers.“

Anganwadis nourish our children in the most crucial period of their lives, a period when their brain develops the most; to ensure universal access to ECCE, these centres need all-round support and training in pedagogy, digital literacy, and foundational literacy and numeracy.

See how Square Panda works to upskill anganwadi workers, here.

WHAT IS EXPERIENTIAL-BASED LEARNING & TEACHING ?

The term ‘experiential learning’ is used to talk about learning that is gained by experience or ‘learning by doing’. 

Fun Fact: The experiential learning concept has been around for a very long time, and was first explored in the education and learning context by educationists like Jean Piaget, among others. It was made most famous by American educational theorist Professor D.A. Kolb, who showed that mastering expertise is a continuous process of experience, reflection, conceptualisation, and experimentation. 

In India, experiential learning can be likened to the Gurukul education prevalent since ancient times across India. The students learnt by performing various tasks under the guidance of the Guru (teacher). Schools across India have already been practising some form of activity and experience-based learning, but the Department of Education has taken this one step further by necessitating experiential learning including learning that has elements of enquiry, gamified, activity-based, story-based, in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), along with parallel teacher training programs to help educators understand the right way to impart such instruction.

Read more about the crucial impact of teacher training on the NEP 2020 here.

Some examples of experiential learning in the classroom:

• The Rainforest Learning Centre in the USA includes experiential education in almost all aspects of their curriculum. Their daycare and preschool-age learners are introduced to environmental clean-ups and animal adoptions, where they not only clean garbage and play with pets, but understand the results of their actions on the environment and community.
• Square Panda conducted pilot studies with our early learning system across schools in India. We provided young students with access to our early literacy platform, where they were taught to start reading the English language using stories and activities. In a period of a few weeks, with no extra intervention at all, we saw a marked improvement in the students’ learning outcomes, in skills like word reading and sentence reading.
• Mahindra International School (India), takes its primary school children on field trips as a part of their academic learning programme. Incorporated during school hours, these trips introduce young children to physical learning environments like zoos and farms.

WHEN DOES EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING HAPPEN ?

True experiential learning takes place when learners get immersed cognitively, emotionally, behaviourally, while reflecting and processing each experience, which then leads to a change in perspective, comprehension, thought, and behaviour. The next step is the application of the newly acquired learning to real-time events, turning these students into individualised learners who are well on the path to future success.

WHY EXPERIENTIAL METHODOLOGIES ARE THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION IN INDIA

The pedagogical approach that is experiential learning has the potential to revolutionise early learning, changing the Indian educational landscape as we know it, for the better.

For Children:

• Future-Ready Skills: An experiential base of learning provides children with real-life experience to match textbook teaching, which can be applied to problems for more practical use of knowledge.
• Personalisation: Traditional learning in India works on a one-size-fits-all approach at present, which affects learning outcomes. With a more experience-based approach, the learning modules can be specifically catered to each child’s individual requirements, enabling better skilling.
• Increased Engagement: Fun stories, activities, games, music, and other aspects of experiential learning all serve to keep young children engaged and exhibiting high levels of motivation as they immerse themselves in the experience.

For Educators:

• Improved Teaching Skills And Competencies: Educators are a very crucial part of ECCE, being responsible for young learners’ development and growth in this foundational period. Personalised, experience-based instructions will help educators professionally develop at a much faster rate while strengthening their subject matter knowledge.
• Knowledge Of Experiential And Activity-Based Teaching Learning Techniques: When educators are trained using experiential methods, their capacity for imparting knowledge using those same techniques increases exponentially, improving the learning outcomes, creating a more holistic development of the students.
• Mindset Changes: Explaining to educators about various styles of teaching is vastly different from allowing them to experience it. Hands-on experiential learning activities have a drastic effect on the mindset of educators, allowing them to relate to the theory, and put it into practice in the classroom.

WHY BUILDING ECCE PROGRAMS USING EXPERIENTIAL TEACHING-LEARNING METHODOLOGIES IS A BETTER IDEA

To ensure a higher quality of foundational learning in ECCE programs across India, there is a need to incorporate the NEP 2020’s vision of a comprehensive experiential teaching-learning methodology. Here’s why we think integrating experience-based instruction into the early classroom has a higher learning outcome:

• Blended Classrooms Can Be The New Norm: Instead of rote learning and traditional classrooms, a new blended form of teaching takes its place, where digital learning is combined with physical instruction. Experiential learning will be interwoven with online learning, creating a virtual safe space for real-life simulations, increasing young children’s engagement, and overall learning outcomes. 
• Gamified Learning: An educational approach to get students inspired and learning via game-based elements, gamification increases the enjoyment of learning, and thereby, retention. When backed by a research-based curriculum, gamified learning develops critical and strategic thinking, supporting students across different learning levels.
• Educator Empowerment: It’s not just students who benefit from a holistic program that teaches via experience. Educators can be trained and empowered to deliver high-quality content, develop strong subject knowledge, and polish their professional skills, using experiential teaching methodologies.
• Playing-&-Learning Activities: “The importance of play-based activities, especially for young learners, cannot be highlighted enough. This approach to learning sees children develop essential life skills like critical thinking, gross and fine motor skills, and much more”, remarks the curriculum head for Square Panda India, Ms. Neha Shah, when asked about the impact this particular experiential learning method has on early childhood education. Even the NEP 2020 itself documents its importance, by stating, “The learning in the Preparatory Class (a class each young learner will attend before the age of 5) shall be based primarily on play-based learning with a focus on developing cognitive, affective, and psychomotor abilities and early literacy and numeracy.” 

This application of theory and academic content to real-world experiences within the classroom and other surroundings allows young children to learn, explore, and respond to situations appropriately. ECCE benefits from such experiential programs by promoting increased aptitude and cognitive development in the early years. India is shedding some much-needed light onto this teaching-learning methodology, increasing adaptation of 21st-century skills and techniques for a better, more literate India. 

Square Panda’s foundational learning program and educator empowerment programs have a holistic approach to teaching and learning, via experiential and activity-based methodology. These research-based techniques use multisensory elements, storytelling, music, play-based activities and other experiential elements to achieve better learning outcomes and optimal results.

What is your take on experiential learning in the Indian classroom? How do you think it benefits ECCE? Comment below.