ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF ECCD PROGRAMMES

Lesson 13: Government Education plans, policies and schemes on ECCE

Integrated Child Development Service Scheme (ICDS)

It is the largest ECCE programme in the country. It is an inter sectoral programme which attempts to directly reach out to children from vulnerable and remote areas and give them a head start by providing integrated programme of health, nutrition and early childhood education.

The objectives of the scheme are multifold:

• To improve the nutritional and health status of preschool children in the age group of 0-6 years.
  
• To lay the foundation of proper psychological development of the child.
  
• To reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school dropouts.
  
• To achieve effective coordination of policy and implementation among the various departments to promote child development.
  
• To enhance the capability of the mother to look after the normal health and nutritional needs of the child through proper nutrition and health education.

Although the scheme has now expanded and is available to deprived sectors, its preschool component remains weak. To strengthen this, monitoring and evaluation cell was set up in NIPCCD to look into ways and means of monitoring of preschool education.