GovernanceMother Tongue ECCE Curriculum “Nua Arunima” in 10 tribal language and moving forward for transformation in early education and life of tribal children in Odisha – Women & Child Development Department Government of Odisha

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Mother Tongue ECCE Curriculum “Nua Arunima” in 10 tribal languages and moving forward for transformation in early education and life of tribal children in Odisha

Women & Child Development Department, Government of Odisha integrate the early childhood care and education in an inclusive and equitable child friendly ECCE service for all children in tribal areas

Problems:

There was a linguistic problem with the tribal children. It was difficult to make them understand the concepts in another language which is not their mother tongue. Teaching through a child’s mother tongue/ home language is internationally recognized as the most appropriate way of working with children in the early years of concept formation. Similarly, the Anganwadi Workers also had to cope with different languages at the same time in an early childhood setting for holistic development. Another problem was to leverage in a systematic way to provide a range of opportunities for a rich environment for the children of the first generation of learners to mainstream in ECE education.

Solutions:

State has implemented the Mother Tongue ECCE Curriculum “Nua Arunima” in 10 tribal languages and is moving forward for transformation in early education and life of tribal children in Odisha. The MTL curriculum was launched in 10 Mother Tongue languages and their educators trained by the State MTL /MLE experts/resource persons. Various other initiatives were taken place such as community awareness building, development of children’s learning abilities and ability to address the educational system with adaptation of theme based curriculum and learning pedagogy. On the other hand, AWWs trained by the ST&SC department’s MLE teachers/educators and linked with pre primary schools of that village for the classroom transaction proficiency in collaboration with S&ME (SSA) program supporting children to continue to develop proficiency in their mother tongue. Also, parents/community participation accelerated in the identified AWCs and home visits were strengthened with a handful of pictorial IEC/SBCC materials on parenting.

Outcomes:

Under this programme, AWWs and Children’s comprehension and participation increased to acquire Nua Arunima Curricular activities with better understanding. More children, parents & community not only increased the access to health, nutrition, immunization but also pre-school education in their home language. There was a social barrier for early learning for the community that is also tackled with the mother tongue curriculum and scaled-up. Because of this programme, children’s education continuity ensured even after the pre-school education and their school readiness also improved. 

Challenges:

The linguistic diversity of the state poses a number of challenges for early childhood educators. To awaken parents’ eagerness on their child’s learning in English which is L3 language in State language policy applicable in SSA was also a challenging task. It was difficult to convince the community as the majority of children were from the first generation of learners. Local practices and blind belief in girl child in ECCE especially in education components were also a barrier to deliver the objective of this programme. There was an unavailability of the AWWs/AW helpers from the same community and speaking the same language with the children.

Innovations:

The major innovation was development and training of ICDS functionaries and AWWs on low cost no cost teaching learning materials preparation by using the parents and grandparents.  Neighborhood and society craftsmans job is making more intelligent methods of happy learning for the preschoolers. Home visit flipbooks proved to be beneficial to make the parents/caregivers understand the importance of early stimulation. However, knowledge, attitude and practice takes time to adapt but IEC/SBCC helps to overcome the challenges. After implementation of this programme, impact assessment also used to be done on a regular basis. It includes Baselining, Internal monitoring, External evaluation and Case studies and documentation.

Opportunities:

Looking at the benefit for the children, the early learning in Mother Tongue Language is a potential to replicate in other languages. Thus, from this year the revised ECCE “Nua Arunima ” curriculum is going to develop in 5 more languages that are highly spoken. It will create an opportunity for the tribal children to get jobs easily in the market because of the Job course, refresher, thematic and e-ILA module on ECCE Curriculum. Teachers are going to be trained on pre primary school readiness, pre-cognitive reading and writing for those children in L1 and L2 as per the language policy of the State. The collaboration aimed to strengthen the skills and capacity of workers at 7202 Anganwadi – along with supervisors, managers and policymakers – to deliver high-quality mother tongue-based early learning and parenting programmes to 180,000 children of 12 Districts out of 30 tribal Districts of the State.

For more information, please contact:
Ms Madhumita Das, State ECCE Consultant at dirwcd.or@nic.in

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