Early Childhood Education for Marginalized Children in India: Deconstructing Quality

Book excerpt: Societal hierarchies in the form of caste, gender, religion and class continue to deprive a large percentage of young children in India of learning opportunities, leading to intergenerational poverty. Existing research indicates that this cycle can be broken by providing appropriate early childhood care and education. Early Childhood Education for Marginalized Children in India reviews India's achievements and challenges, and identifies the complex issues related to providing early childhood education to children from marginalized communities. The book presents evidence-based approaches to developing and scaling up good quality early childhood education programmes. It explores what 'quality' means in the Indian context and identifies core elements that must be integral to all initiatives that aim to promote holistic development, while addressing India's significant scale and sociocultural diversity. The available literature has mostly discussed information from Western nations and the book attempts to address this gap.