Mumbai body wants to set up 10 ideal pre-schools in Delhi

City-based Early Childhood Association (ECA), a pan India body with 2,900 pre-schools, 35 NGOs and 45 corporate groups as its members, has written a letter to Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, expressing a desire to partner in setting up 10 ideal pre- schools in the national capital.
The letter was in response to a desire expressed by Sisodia, who is also Delhi's Education Minister, to set up 10 ideal pre-schools while taking part in a conference organised by the Dr Ambedkar University last month.
The conference, called 'Ensuring Foundation Enhancing Learning', was organised by Center for Early Childhood Education and Development in partnership with UNICEF and Children's Investment Fund Foundation.

"We have compiled a comparison of 39 countries and their early childhood curriculum, policies and programmes and during this comparative study we were able to study best practices of more than 30 countries," ECA stated in its letter to Sisodia.
It offered five recommendations for the Delhi Government's ideal pre-school project. One of them said pre- schools be rechristened as 'Early Childhood Centers'.
"In our country pre-schools are perceived as preparatory for primary and thus the focus is not on developmentally appropriate curriculum but on testing and burdening the child," it stated.