Education Paves the Way of Education. Role of Early Childhood Education in Smoothening the Way of Further Education for Children: A Case Study of Dainhat area of West Bengal, India

Early childhood education is now a day’s recognized as one of the significant interventions in human life because child brain starts developing very early and it is therefore necessary to provide right support from the early childhood stage. It is the most critical period when the foundations are laid for life-long development. A number of children worldwide suffer due to poverty, under nutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and poor learning environments and these in turn limits their success in future. Therefore it is better to provide an equal start at the early age when children’s brains are developing most rapidly, and the basis for their cognitive, social and emotional development is being formed. In India, the integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) has been launched by the Govt. of India on 2nd October 1975. Nowadays, ICDS represents one of the world’s largest and most unique universalized programmes for early childhood development. The objective is to tackle the early childhood challenge of providing pre-school education on one hand and breaking the vicious cycle of malnutrition, morbidity, reduced learning capacity and mortality, on the other. This paper is based on primary data on 466 school children and 466 household in Dainhat area of west Bengal, India and the purpose is to investigate two interrelated issues: which factors affect the parental decision of sending children to preschool (or Anganwadi Centre) and whether preschool provide any dividend to children in their later education. On the basis of this data, the study reveals that, the parental decision of sending children to anganwadi centre is associated with a social stigma. The anganwadi centre is mostly availed by the children form economically and socially marginalized section of the society. In terms of the impact, no such dividend has been noticed that preschool might have on child’s performance (both cognitive and non-cognitive). Rather the estimates suggests negative effect of preschool on child’s performance in a sense that, those who had been to preschool have a lesser probability of success. And also school choosing effect has more important impact on children’s performance.