The School Education Department is apparently not in a position to decide on increasing the number of anganwadi centres for extending Montessori education-based LKG/UKG classes.
The department will toe the line of the Health Department's stand on functioning of schools, and there is no certainty that the initiative that began in 2019-20 whereby anganwadi centres within the Government Middle School premises will be extended during 2021-22, according to official sources.
The school education department has received feedback from rural parts in the district that the reverse migration necessitated by the COVID-19 lockdown had brought back several hundreds of families to the villages from industrialised region in Western Tamil Nadu.
There are indications that the patronage for LKG/UKG will be high since the initiative implies huge savings of money for the displaced families. The need for poor parents to shell out huge amounts for pre-primary education does not arise. Also, their wards get the benefit of all the freebies of the government, R. Arivazhagan, Chief Educational Officer, said.
The School Education Department had teamed up with the District Institute of Education and Training to train primary-level teachers to handle the LKG/UKG classes. The teachers received training to improve their learning, reading and writing competencies in English. Books on Tamil, English, Mathematics and Environmental Science were developed in convergence with School Education Department and supplied to all the children studying in LKG and UKG.
While the anganwadi centres functioning come under the administrative control of Directorate of Integrated Child Development Services, pre-school related activities are handled by the School Education department.
The scheme with convergence of the two departments has helped in higher enrolment of children in Government schools. It will be easier to retain LKG/UKG students in the government schools rather than find students for first standard, the CEO said.
