Even as admissions to private playschools for the new academic year is coming to a close in Kozhikode district, most of them continue to function in an unregulated environment without meeting even basic legal requirements.
Many playschool or day-care centre managements are not aware of the guidelines of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) that make it mandatory for them to register with the commission and ensure the safety of students.
NCPCR certificate
The NCPCR’s detailed guidelines, brought out recently, insist that recognition will be granted to the playschool only after the visit of a two-member team from the commission.
The certificate will be valid for a year and renewal can be possible only if the institution is found to be following the norms. Closed-circuit television cameras should be installed on the premises to ensure the safety of children.
Little Daffodils School Principal K. Ramachandran said permission had not been sought from any government agency to set up the preschool. “I have not come across any such guidelines either,” he told The Hindu.
A representative of Tiny Tots Nursery School in Kozhikode said they too had not heard about it. “We have registered with the city corporation. We have installed CCTV cameras on the premises and we do a background check of the staff too. But, we are not aware of the NCPCR guidelines.”
Monitoring of schools
There is still no clarity on who should monitor the functioning of such schools. An official from the Department of Public Instruction in Thiruvananthapuram said the functioning of pre-primary schools was not under their jurisdiction. Sources in the Department of Social Justice said only anganwadis run under the Integrated Child Development Scheme came under their purview.
M. Radhakrishnan Master, chairperson of the standing committee for education, Kozhikode Corporation, said registration was not mandatory for such schools. “We don’t have any data on them,” he said.
A representative of Eurokids India, Mumbai, which runs preschools across the country, however, claimed that they were following most of the guidelines. “Our schools have been certified by Bureau Veritas,” she said.
Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights chairperson Shoba Koshy said the commission had prepared a set of recommendations for preschools in view of complaints from parents.
“It is easy to start a playschool or preschool in every nook and corner of the State. Security is a major issue. A few months ago, a toddler drowned in the Periyar in Kochi as she walked away from a day-care centre unnoticed by the staff there,” she said.
Though child psychologists and education experts generally disapprove of sending children aged below five years to formal institutions, there has been a spurt in demand for pre-schools across the State over a decade. Societal changes, rapid urbanisation, nuclear families, working parents, and breaking up of family relationships are cited as reasons.
