In Haryana, 55% preschoolers are ‘school ready’, suggests the first statewide observation-based assessment conducted by the Haryana women and child development department.
At 65%, Ambala and Palwal districts lead the chart of preschoolers who are school ready.
“The survey is part of the state government’s drive to provide quality education at the pre-school level through playschools,” said an official.
In the survey, 55% of children were marked as ‘1’ in all five development domains (composite score), which implies that these children could ‘perform well’ in all five developmental domains – physical, socio-emotional, language, cognitive and early numeracy (math) – and can be deemed ‘school ready’.
“Composite score can be used as a proxy for school readiness of a child,” said the official.
The assessment was done in all the 25,962 Anganwadi centers across 22 districts of the state. The data was collected from 4,000 play schools in 22 districts. Assessment covered all the children aged 3 to 6 years, who were enrolled in Anganwadi Centers.
Anganwadi workers observed children aged 3-6 years for 15 days and based on their assessment filled the report cards. Supervisors collected the assessment summary sheet and entered the data into a digital portal.
Two separate sets of report cards were used for 3-4 and 4-5 age groups. Both the report cards covered five development domains, but differed in skills which were tested. Report card for the 3-4 years age group covered 24 skills in total – five skills each for physical, socio-emotional, language, and cognitive development and four skills related to early numeracy.
Report cards for the 4-5 age group covered 25 skills in total – five skills for each of the five developmental domains. For each skill, a child was marked at three levels – performs well, attempts and needs support.
The assessment was executed thrice in the beginning of the academic session (base line), middle of the programme (mid line) and in the last month of the academic year (end line).
As per the survey, in physical development and socio emotional development children were doing well from baseline to end line.
“In numeracy development, the progress is relatively poor than the other parameters and gives an idea for the focus area for the next year,” the official added.