KARACHI: “This convention is violating the law about right to education drawn in 2013 whereby education must be provided to children between the ages of five and 16. We have to neglect ages three to five for which we will have to review Article 25-A [of the constitution],” said additional secretary for education Dr Fazlullah Pechuho.

He was speaking after hearing the declaration and consensus on Early Childhood Education and Development (ECED) on day two of the conference on it looking at the South Asian perspectives in a hotel here on Tuesday.

“The declaration has to be amended to follow the recommendations of this conference and convention,” he said.

“We have sent recommendations for a cadre of teachers for providing early childhood education [ECE] to the three to five age group. They should all be female teachers with a graduation degree and a diploma in the ECE for which I also suggest we set up an institution to prepare them for the job, a prerequisite for any recruitment of ECE appointment.

“The shortage of finances can be dealt with but we are facing a bigger problem of shortage of human resource. We have not invested in human resource, which we have to do now,” said Dr Pechuho before being overcome by emotion and breaking down.

“I’m getting resistance from everywhere on the aspect of teachers’ reform. We recruited so many teachers, who I don’t see as teachers. Seventy to 90 per cent of them are untrained,” he said with tears in his eyes.

“It is an uphill task because for 30 years now there haven’t been recruitments on merit. As a result the education department has become an employment exchange. But we have to correct this because if we want to meet the Millennium Development Goals, which doesn’t look like it’s happening anyway.”

Earlier, senior educationist Dr Muhammad Memon during his keynote address on ‘From policy to action of partnership’ tried to do away with the myths associated with Early Childhood Education. “People still don’t believe that the ECE is the way to education. They think it is something that the elite do. Some say that it is too young an age to be educating children at and that the home is the best place for early years’ learning,” he said.

“As a little boy, I went to a school hoping to learn like the other children there but was told to run away by the teacher there. I complained to my grandmother about it and asked her to get me admitted to the school. My grandmother took me to the school but they wouldn’t enrol me as they said I was underage. Then on her insistence and seeing my eagerness, the school increased my age to let me get enrolled there,” he said.

“Today I have two little granddaughters. One is four and the other five-and-a-half years of age. They have been lucky to go to school early. They can communicate in Sindhi, Urdu, English and Punjabi. We are Sindhis and yet the girls know Punjabi, which we haven’t taught them. They just picked up the language through their interaction with other children in their school in the UAE.

“So we have to move away from the myths to recognise reality. ECE helps children develop learning habits easily. So those who have had an ECE background can handle higher education easily,” Dr Memon said while stressing the need for a vibrant policy on early childhood education.

“Although the National Education Policy-2009 recognises the role of ECE, there is a need for an explicit policy for it.”

Meanwhile, the closing day began with a session on research and assessment where representatives from ASER (India), Centre for Early Childhood Education (India) and Mobile Creches (India) shared their case studies on a longitudinal analysis and trends captured at the institutions.

Another session on innovations: materials, access and parenting highlighted extremely critical techniques adopted in Nepal as a means of concentrating on childhood development from the critical years.

Later the participants broke into groups to convene in terms of drafting of a declaration and consensus statement for ECED policy and implementation. Baela Raza Jamil, director for programmes at the Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagah, said the recommendations would be shared with all at the conference after careful editing.

Published in Dawn, September 18th, 2014