KARACHI, Feb 5: The Sindh government is giving a final shape to a plan, costing Rs18.06 billion, to enhance the existing rate of Early Childhood Education (ECE) up to 60 per cent by the year 2015.

Official documents said that 36 per cent of 3-5 age group children were already attending formal classes of Nursery/KG in urban schools and Katchi class in rural schools of the province. The total population of the age group was 2.34 million, which would rise to 2.90 million by the year 2015. About 890,000 more children would receive the ECE during the planned period.

The provincial government has prepared an action plan to achieve the Education For All (EFA) goals, as set by the Jometin Conference, 1990, and subsequently revised at the Dakar Conference, 2000, which would be reviewed at a meeting of the Sindh EFA forum scheduled to be held on Tuesday.

The overall cost of the action plan has been estimated to be Rs78.022 billion, including Rs18.06 billion of the ECE.

The report also mentions psychiatrists view that the age of a child between 2-5 is of vital importance in the development of an individual, therefore nursery schools were started.

According to official reports, initiative for the ECE in Sindh was taken in 1990-92 in the urban areas by an NGO, while studies in 1995 and 1997-98 revealed that one-thirds of the primary school level children in the government schools were sitting in pre-primary class called "Katchi", which needed to be reorganized as an ECE group.

Expressing dissatisfaction over the state of pre-primary education, the report included that the present condition of Katchi class students was far below the level of concept of the nursery or the ECE.

In urban area the situation is better due to private institutions where parents have to pay for pre-primary education, but in rural area the position was entirely different.

The teachers in rural areas teach the student of Katchi class only letters and words of mother tongue and counting in arithmetic and failed to pay attention to development of the senses and guide child's imagination, the report said. It suggested that the Katchi classes needed improvement in real sense of the ECE.

Under the Educational Sector Reforms (ESR) innovative programme funds have been provided to the city and district governments to establish or begin ECE classes at the primary schools, whereas under the Girls Primary Education Development Programme the early childhood education programme is being implemented at the community model schools.

The Provincial Institute for Teachers' Education (PITE), Nawabshah, has also included the ECE in the training of 12,000 primary school teachers' training programmes. The ECE programme is also included in the Decentralized Elementary Education Project, under which establishment of 1,200 schools has been approved at the total cost of Rs70.379 million, while 3,600 teachers would also be trained in the ECE area.

The total population of the 3-5 year age group is estimated to be 1.2 million boys and 1.14 million girls. This population would increase by 2010 to 2.69 million.

The Sindh government's draft EFA plan proposes to increase the rate of participation from 36 per cent to 60 per cent at the end of the planned period.

The EFA plan emphasizes for opening of 883 ECE centres every year in the existing schools. One teacher from every school would be trained in the ECE skills by the PITE in collaboration with the Directorate of Research and Assessment Jamshoro and EDOs (Education).

The government would be having a total of 10,600 ECE centres in the existing schools, while it would be constructing 13,134 additional ECE classrooms, in addition to 5,146 ECE centres estimated to be functioning in the private schools.

The government would need a total of 24,734 teachers, instructors and supervisors to execute the ECE sector plan.