Poshan BhiPadhaiBhi

Why is in news? Training under Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi

Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi (PBPB) is a path breaking Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) program to help India develop the world’s largest, universal, high-quality pre-school network at Anganwadi Centers, in alignment with the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Under the programme, steps have been taken to bolster early childhood care and education and good nutrition practices through development and use of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and locally available toys for learning at AWCs.

All 36 States/ UT’s have been paired to facilitate exchange of indigenous toys/folklores as part of the vision for Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.

Detailed guidelines have been shared with all States on creation of DIY toy kits as part of Teaching Learning Material creation workshops. Further, NIPCCD has collated and digitized toy focused teaching and learning content.

Under Mission Poshan 2.0, convergence is a key component to ensure monitoring and implementation of service delivery.

To facilitate the same, at the district level, there is the mechanism of the District Nutrition Committee with the DM/DC as Chairperson and all officers from line departments such as Health, Education, Panchayati Raj, Rural Development etc.

Similarly at the State-level, the State level Steering Committee is headed by the Chief Secretary of the State.

These institutional mechanisms are in place to oversee the outcome and delivery of the scheme.

Further, an IT application (Poshan Tracker) was rolled out on 1st March 2021 to monitor progress of Mission Poshan 2.0 in near real-time on defined indicators.

Technology under Poshan Tracker is already being leveraged for dynamic identification of stunting, wasting, under-weight prevalence among children and last mile tracking of service delivery, including both nutrition and early childhood development through daily activities.

PBPB:

Poshan Bhi, Padhai Bhi campaign for Early Childhood Care and Education.

PBPB is not a separate scheme but is a programme component under ECCE of Anganwadi services under Mission Poshan 2.0.

There is no separate budget for the programme as it is part of the overall budget allocated for Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0.

Early Childhood - It refers to the formative stage of the first six years of life, with well-marked sub-stages and age-specific needs.

Anganwadi - Anganwadi is a type of rural child care centre that serves as a crucial link between the government and the rural population, particularly pregnant women, new mothers, and children under the age of six.

Anganwadi centres provide basic health care, nutrition, and early childhood education services to women and children in their respective villages.

Close to 13.9 lakh operational Anganwadi centres across the country are providing supplementary nutrition and early care and education to around 8 crore beneficiary children under the age of 6 years, making it the largest public provisioning of such services in the world.

The implementation of PBPB includes conducting Capacity Building trainings for ICDS functionaries.

Objectives of the training program include:

ipromoting early stimulation for the first 1000 days and ECCE for children 3-6 years of age,

iideveloping ECCE understanding of Anganwadi Workers,

iiiemphasizing developmental domains (socio-emotional-ethical, physical and motor, cognitive, etc., and the development of Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), and

ivreinforcing nutrition knowledge of Anganwadi Workers.

The target age group under this campaign is Children under 6 years, especially under 3 years.

The National Education Policy prioritizes foundational literacy and numeracy with emphasis on Child’s Mother tongue.

Recommendations of High-Level Task Force on ECCE (2022):

“Rebranding of anganwadis” with upgraded infrastructure;

Re-designation of Anganwadis workers as Anganwadi teachers, and helpers as childcare workers;

Creche facilities for children under 3 years;

Develop common curriculum across different models and emphasis on education in child’s mother tongue.

The training programmes are designed to be conducted through a Two-Tier Model to cover all the engaged functionaries’ upto the AWC level in all States/UTs in a 3 day Training programme to be conducted through NIPCCD.

However, initially, to test the training content and implementation model, a pilot training programme has been designed for 10 Districts across the country.