Homegrown plans jostle with western impact

PUNE: Three-year-old Dhruv Joshi is getting ready to visit the Rajiv Gandhi Zoological Park in Katraj. February is dedicated for animals in his pre-school and there is not a better place to get introduced to the animal kingdom than the zoo.
Each month of the year in his pre-school is dedicated to one topic - plants and vegetables, health and hygiene, colours and shapes, music and dance, among others and all these topics are taught to children in innovative ways.For most pre-schools, teaching is done out of class in a practical and innovative manner that would appeal to tiny tots.
Deeksha Kalyani, director of the Kalyani School, said, "The focus is more on bringing everything alive and giving a first-hand experience to the children. Taking them to the vegetable market and having them see all that is happening helps their learning."
Pre-schools evolve curriculums that are activity-cum-skill based and promote learning related to everyday life and encourage environmental consciousness.
Many schools have adopted the Reggio Emilia curriculum, which schools say, enhances a child's curiosity and provides rich and carefully resourced environment to stimulate learning.
Some schools that design their own curriculum have a team doing the research and content development to bring out worksheets and activity-based learning of concepts.
Educomp, that runs a chain of 250 pre-schools across the country under the brand Little Millennium, has designed its own curriculum called Seven Petals. Besides inculcating academic development, the curriculum fosters the love of sports in children and focuses on nurturing physical fitness in children between two and six years of age.
A special programme for children between 18 months and 2.5 years is designed for the first set of life skills like listening, responding to instructions, sharing, taking turns and playing with cooperation.
Rozina Somji, who runs a Little Millennium franchise, said, "We focus on making the child aware of himself or herself and their immediate environment. Our curriculum is designed to help children develop independence, safety, hygiene and self-help skills."
Children are also taught emotional and social skills that build values of friendship, sharing, caring and compassion through classroom conversations, discussions, role play and stage exposure. Children are also taught new social rules while cooperating and responding to the feelings of others.
Radhika Rao, academics head of Oi, another chain of pre-schools said, "Through 'Sparkz', we inculcate the love for learning in each child. We use projectors and tablets where modern applications are developed in the form of games to cater to the new-age children."
Some pre-schools look to a time when formal education begins. "When a child starts pre-primary education, those schools expect that they have knowledge of certain basic things. Our curriculum includes activity and theme-based learning aided with videos and practical examples to instill life and social skills," said Amol Arora, vice chairman and managing director, Shemrock and Shemford group of schools.
They bank on their own research and development wing based in Delhi which designs the curricula for all their 425 pre-schools across India, including four in Pune.
KidZee recently announced the rollout of a specialized curriculum - 'Interactive iLLUME'. It includes proprietary audio-visual content, talking pens and apps on tablets and rhymes based on the topics of learning. The curriculum includes an 'English Readiness Program' and a 'School Readiness' modules for small children which includes phonetics and audio, visual and kinetics.
KVS Seshasai, CEO at Zee Learn, which runs the KidZee chain of pre-schools, said, "This is a specially devised curriculum and pedagogy to enable the child to acquire language, mathematical, cognitive, social and emotional skills at an early age."
They too have an in-house research team for children up to 3.5 years of age. "The curriculum is based on the milestones of children in the current age, feedback from parents and the expectations of the bigger schools," said Sindu Aven, academic head, Zee Learn.
However, such teaching goes against the very grain of pre-schools, said educationist Heramb Kulkarni. "Pre-schools have become too formal these days and do not stick to the very intention of their existence of enabling children to play at school. They do what is done at formal schooling even if they call it more practical. At the end of the day, they restrict children to a set discipline of sitting inside a classroom or maybe somewhere outside the class and surroundings and try and dump concepts into their minds. If this continues, the child will never evolve," he added.