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，在这一时期获得的经验可以对儿童的发展产生长期的影响。因此，幼儿教育(此后称为幼儿教育)对于为儿童的未来提供坚实的基础极为重要。这对发展中世界的儿童具有更大的意义，因为这些儿童更容易受到不能充分发展的风险的影响。因此，欧洲经委会的倡议对像印度这样的发展中国家具有重大意义。尽管印度有世界上最大的公共赞助的幼儿教育和保育方案之一，名为儿童综合发展计划(ICDS)，以及几项私人倡议，但这些方案对儿童认知和社会发展的影响在很大程度上尚不清楚。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良方面的表现是有据可查的，尽管认知和非认知技能令人怀疑。此外，现有信息表明，印度仍有相当数量的儿童遭受不同形式的贫困和不发达，学龄前教育入学率相当低(儿童基金会和世界银行集团2016)。此外，由于家长认为私立幼儿园在发展孩子技能方面更好，对昂贵的私立幼儿园的需求越来越大。因此，在印度，对儿童发展和人力资本形成至关重要的最明显的问题是：印度现有的欧洲经委会规定是否在认知和非认知发展方面为儿童提供了任何优势？私立幼儿园在发展孩子的认知和社交技能方面是否比公立幼儿园更有效？因此，这项研究建议批判性地审视现有早期教育实践的内在价值，为儿童更好的未来奠定基础。研究的主要目标是通过提供与政策相关的经验证据，帮助发展中国家更好地照顾儿童，从而帮助儿童和社会。这项独特的研究可能在印度是第一次，它将从儿童发展的不同角度具有很强的政策相关性。例如，如果公共赞助的欧洲经委会条款没有为儿童提供任何红利，则需要立即采取政策措施，使其更加有效，以便儿童能够得到他们所需的早期支助，以充分发挥其潜力。此外，它还将提供大量证据，说明欧洲经委会不同规定的相对有效性，即。公立和私立幼儿园，这对确保儿童得到适当的照顾和支持极为重要。此外，这项研究将有助于揭示这方面的理论争论。

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.