The Himachal government will implement a comprehensive pre-school child care program, ET Education

Under the programme, the education department will implement a combination of all four early childhood care and education (ECCE) models recommended in the National Education Policy 2020, Sukhu said.

Shimla, Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Thursday said the government would soon launch a program to ensure overall development of children aged three to six years. “This initiative underlines the commitment of the state government towards providing quality early childhood education and ensuring holistic development and nurturing of young minds in Himachal,” he said in a statement here. Under the program, the education department would implement a combination of all four Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) models recommended in the National Education Policy 2020, Sukhu said.

These models include stand-alone anganwadis and anganwadis located near primary schools, pre-schools for children up to five or six years of age located near existing primary schools and stand-alone kindergartens, he added.

The minister said that the state government currently runs a total of 6,297 pre-primary classes in primary schools with an enrollment of around 60,000 children and 2,377 anganwadis located near these primary schools.

He said that under the ‘Himachal Pradesh Tutoring and Early Childhood Education Scheme’, the state government would engage ECCE teachers in all 6,297 schools by following the norms of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).

He reiterated the State Government’s commitment to improving access to education by providing quality education closer to students’ homes, announcing that recruitment of different categories of teachers would begin soon to prevent disruption of learning due to teacher shortage.

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