Does Early Childhood Education in India Provide Any Dividend to the Children? An Investigation of the Effect of Children's Kindergarten Attendance on their Performance.

幼儿期是人类生命中最关键的时期，在此期间获得的经验可以对儿童的发展产生持久的影响。因此，幼儿教育（以下简称ECE）对于为儿童的未来提供坚实的基础非常重要。这对发展中国家的儿童具有更大的意义，因为这些儿童更容易受到无法充分发挥其潜力的风险。因此，欧洲经委会的倡议对印度等发展中国家具有重大意义。尽管印度拥有世界上最大的公共资助的儿童早期教育和护理项目之一，即综合儿童发展计划（ICDS），以及一些私人倡议，但这些项目对儿童认知和社会发展的影响在很大程度上是未知的。从印度的情况来看，欧洲经委会公共方案在减少儿童营养不良和营养不足方面的表现有据可查，尽管认知和非认知技能值得怀疑。此外，现有信息表明，印度相当多的儿童仍然遭受不同形式的贫困和不发达，幼儿园入学率相当低（联合国儿童基金会和世界银行集团，2016年）。此外，由于家长认为私立幼儿园在培养孩子的技能方面更好，对昂贵的私立幼儿园的需求也在增加。因此，在印度情况下，对儿童发展和人力资本形成至关重要的最明显问题是：欧洲经委会在印度的现有规定是否在认知和非认知发展方面对儿童有任何好处？私立幼儿园在培养孩子的认知能力和社交能力方面是否比公立幼儿园更有效？因此，本研究建议批判性地审视现有早期教育实践的内在价值，为儿童提供更美好的未来奠定基础。这项研究的主要目标是通过提供与政策相关的经验证据来帮助儿童和社会，这些证据将有助于发展中国家更好地照顾其儿童。这项独特的研究，也许是印度第一个这样的研究，将从儿童发展的各个角度具有很强的政策相关性。例如，如果公开赞助的欧洲经委会规定没有给儿童带来任何好处，那么就需要立即采取政策措施，使其更加有效，以便儿童能够得到所需的早期支助，以充分发挥其潜力。此外，它将为不同的欧洲经委会规定（即公立和私立幼儿园）的相对有效性提供大量证据，这对于确保儿童得到适当的照顾和支持极为重要。此外，该研究将阐明这方面的理论争论。

Early childhood is the most crucial period of human life and experienced gained during this time can have a long-lasting effect on children’s development. Therefore, early childhood education (henceforth ECE) is immensely important for providing a strong foundation for children for their future. This has even greater significance for children in the developing world as these children are more vulnerable to risks of not developing to their fullest potential.Therefore, ECE initiatives are of huge relevance for developing countries like India. Although, India has one of the world’s largest publicly sponsored early childhood education and care programme named Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) along with several private initiatives, the effect of such programmes on children’s cognitive and social development is largely unidentified. Looking at the Indian context, the performance of the public ECE programme with regards to reducing malnutrition and undernutrition among children is well documented, albeit cognitive and non-cognitive skills are dubious. Besides, available information suggests that a considerable number of children in India still suffers from different forms of poverty and underdevelopment, and enrolment in preschools is considerably low (UNICEF and World Bank Group 2016). Furthermore, there is an increasing demand for expensive private kindergartens with the perception among parents that private kindergartens are better in developing children’s skills. Therefore, the most obvious questions, which are crucial for children’s development and human capital formation, in the Indian context are: whether existing ECE provisions in India provide any advantage to children in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive development? And whether private kindergartens are more effective compared to the public ones in developing children's cognitive and social skills? Hence, this study proposes to look critically at the intrinsic worth of existing early educational practices in providing a foundation for a better future for the children.The prime objective of the study is to help children and the society by providing policy-relevant empirical evidence which will help developing countries to better care for its children. This unique study, perhaps first of its kind in India, will have a strong policy relevance from various perspectives of child development. For instance, if the publicly sponsored ECE provisions do not provide any dividend to children then immediate policy measures are needed to make it more effective so that children can get the early support they need to develop their fullest potential. Furthermore, it will provide substantial evidence on the relative effectiveness of different ECE provisions viz. public and private kindergartens, which is extremely important to make sure that children get appropriate care and support. Moreover, the study will shed light on the theoretical debate in this regard.