Assessment of School Readiness Skills in Children

aged 3-6 years across 27 ICDS Centers in Bangalore (Urban)

Assessment of School Readiness Skills in Children aged 3-6 years across 27 ICDS

Centers in Bangalore (Urban)

© Save The Children 2016

Contact AddressSave the Children | India, Bangalore5th Floor, Labelle Suite, 3rd Main, HBR Layout, 4th Block, Bangalore – 560043. Karnataka.Head Office: Plot no 91, Sector 44Gurgaon – 122003, Haryana, India.www.savethechildren.inTelephone: +91 124 475 2000

ii

ContentsFiguresAcronyms1. Introduction...........................................................................................................12. Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and Early Learning.......................23. Scope of Assessment.............................................................................................34. School Readiness Tool- IDELA, a brief...................................................................3

4.1. 4.1 IDELA Domains..........................................................................................45. Study areas, Data collection and Methodology.....................................................26. Results...................................................................................................................3

6.1. Non-response analysis....................................................................................46.2. Analysis of IDELA domains by age..................................................................56.3. Motor Development.........................................................................................66.4. Early Literacy..................................................................................................76.5. Early Math.......................................................................................................86.6. Social-Emotional Development.......................................................................96.7. Performance by Gender..................................................................................96.8. Performance in Intervention vs. Non-intervention Anganwadi......................10

7. Observations during Assessment........................................................................11

Annexure 1 List of Anganwadi centres assessedAnnexure 2 Other services of ICD centresAnnexure 3 IDELA tool

iii

FiguresFigure 1 Gender-wise distribution of total sampleFigure 2 Non-response by IDELA DomainFigure 3 Total IDELA % Correct by ageFigure 4 Motor Development % correct by item by ageFigure 5 Early Literacy % correct by item by ageFigure 6 Early Math % correct by item by ageFigure 7 Average Social-Emotional % correct by item by ageFigure 8 Subtasks with differences by gender Figure 9 Performance in Intervention vs. Non-intervention AWCs

AcronymsAWCs Anganwadi CentreECCD Early Childhood Care and DevelopmentECCE Early Childhood Care and Education IDELA International Development and Early Learning AssessmentICDS Integrated Child Development SchemePSE Pre-School Education

iv

1. IntroductionSave the Children India is supported by Target for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) program in Bangalore since 2014. And one of the thematic focus has been on education which gives children an opportunity to realize their right to education and smooth transition from pre-school to school with improved learning level (both scholastic and cognitive). The early learning component of the ICDS is a significant input for providing a sound foundation for cumulative lifelong learning and development. It also contributes to the universalization of primary education, by providing the child, the necessary skills for primary schooling and offering substitute care to younger siblings, thus freeing the older ones – especially girls – to attend school. Save the Children, being an active child rights advocate in promotion of child rights feels that the children up to the age of 6 years need to be given more attention, which would enhance their survival and development opportunities. Therefore, the ICDS centres are focused on overall child survival and development by providing other services which come under ICDS (Attached as Annexure 2). In order to strengthen the delivery services of ICDS centre, Save the Children provided necessary support to Anganwadi workers/facilitators, enabling them to plan holistic services to children between the age group of 0-6 years with an emphasis on children between 3-6 years. Save the Children in partnership with implementing agencies has been working since 2014 in creating child friendly, gender sensitive learning environments in 27 ICDS Centres and 60 Primary Schools in Bangalore (Urban) District, Karnataka. Young children have an immense capacity to learn. In fact, from birth, each moment of play, exploration, and observation is a learning moment for a young child. Teachers and caregivers can play a key role in making the most of these opportunities, setting a strong foundation for future learning. Literacy acquisition, the process of becoming a reader, begins in the earliest stages of a child’s life. During the early years, when children are not yet reading and writing, they are still earning the foundational skills and tools needed to read and write. This stage is called emergent literacy. Much in the same way, even before children learn to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and count to one hundred, children learn several concepts about numbers and mathematics that are a part of emergent math.

Emergent or Early literacy is situated within the greater process of literacy development, with skilled reading as the ultimate goal. Skilled reading is defined as an “individual’s active, autonomous engagement with print”, which stresses both reading and writing as components of engagement. This first critical stage, emergent literacy, begins at birth and ends at the stage at

which a child begins to read or decode with some fluency (this is around age 6, or usually in the first one-to-two years of primary school). Furthermore, the concept of emergent literacy emphasizes the fact that even young children are learners who can acquire the skills and tools necessary for reading. Although early literacy must be taught in a multidimensional approach, in schools and in the home, with different media and methods so as to meet the individual needs of each child, there is some consensus regarding which domains are critical to developmentally appropriate emergent literacy. Each of these domains is interrelated, and just as later literacy skill builds upon a foundation in these domains, these areas all build upon one another-

Oral language development, or Talking and Listening Print awareness, or Understanding Text Book knowledge, or Understanding Books Alphabetic knowledge, or A to Z Phonemic and phonological awareness, or Understanding Sounds Enjoyment and motivation to read and interact with books

Much in the same way as emergent literacy, Emergent or Early math is concerned with the earliest phases of the development of mathematical and spatial concepts. These skills are vital for later success in life, since math is used daily in adult life, and is important for future employment. Emergent math should be viewed as part of a process, rather than a period of acquisition of particular skills. This process involves the development of knowledge within the following areas:

Logo-Mathematical concepts Spatial concepts or Space Sorting and classification, or Sorting Patterns and seriation, or Patterns Concepts about time, or Time Problem Solving Number concepts, or Numbers

2. Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and Early Learning

ICDS was launched on 2nd October 1975, and today, ICDS Scheme represents one of the world’s largest and most integrated programmes for early

2

childhood development. ICDS is the foremost symbol of India’s commitment to her children – India’s response to the challenge of providing pre-school education on one hand and breaking the vicious cycle of malnutrition, morbidity, reduced learning capacity and mortality, on the other. The Scheme was launched with the following objectives:

to lay the foundation for proper psychological, physical and social development of the child;

to improve the nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-6 years;

to reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school dropout;

to achieve effective co-ordination of policy and implementation amongst the various departments to promote child development; and

to enhance the capability of the mother to look after the normal health and nutritional needs of the child through proper nutrition and health education

The objectives are sought to be achieved through a package of services comprising:

pre-school non-formal education supplementary nutrition immunization health check-up referral services nutrition & health education

3. Scope of AssessmentSave the Children has developed a rigorous, valid measure called on International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) and this tool was selected to be administered in children aged 3-6 years across 27 ICDS Centres in Bangalore. The assessment with children aims to undertake a baseline study to assess emergent literacy and math skills among children between 3 to 6 years1 in order to ensure a smooth transition of children from pre-primary to primary schools. In general, the assessment aimed at assessing the school readiness skills in children. In this assessment, only the Non-formal Pre-Schools/Anganwadi centers children were considered who are registered with the AWCs. The Anganwadi Center is located in a community courtyard, which is the main platform for 1 Since it was felt that children below 3.10 years were too young for the assessment, all children in the 27 AWCs centers between the age group 3.10 years to 6 years were interviewed.

3

catering the needs of children from 0-6 years. These AWCs have been set up in the urban poor communities. For IDELA assessment all children within the age range of 3.10 years to 6 years were selected across 27 centers, which are located in the urban slum of Bangalore. It was felt that the children below 3.10 years were too young to be assessed and thus the children above 3.10 years were selected.

4. School Readiness Tool- IDELA, a briefSave the Children is committed to implementing effective programs grounded in strong evidence. There is consensus that a reliable, international measurement of early learning and development is needed to inform program quality and help governments monitor their progress towards ECCD goals as well as inspire action and scale up of ECCD initiatives. Yet there are no tools available, that can capture the multi-dimensional aspects of development and early learning in feasible, child-sensitive and reliable ways. Few international tools can be used to measure the impact of ECCD interventions across varied settings.

In 2011, based on lessons learned from years of early childhood programming as well as a comprehensive review of existing child development assessments, Save the Children began the process of creating and validating the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (Annexure- 3) The IDELA is an easy-to-use, rigorous global assessment prototype that measures children's early learning and development and provides ministries and ECCD programs with clear evidence on the status of children from 3 to 6 years. The evidence on child outcomes supports continual program improvement and highlights program strengths and weaknesses in

established ECCD programs. IDELA covers four developmental domains; motor development, early language & literacy, early numeracy/problem and socio-emotional skills. All the task in the assessment are designed as play with children focus on skills like: Hopping Phonemic awareness Oral language Letter knowledge Emergent writing Understanding feelings

4

Self -awareness Shapes and spatial relations

Problem solving Measurement and comparison

4.1. IDELA DomainsThe IDELA assessment is used to generate an overall measure of an early learning and development (school readiness) score. The four core domains of Motor Development, Early Literacy, Early Math and Social-Emotional Development are used to create the overall IDELA score. To create this score, it includes 24 sub-tasks, which belong to four core domains and two additional themes as follows:

Gross and Fine Motor Developme

nt

Emergent Literacy

and Language

Emergent Numeracy

Social-emotional Developme

nt

Executive Functioning

Hopping on one foot

Print awareness

Measurement and

comparisonPeer

relationshipsShort-term memory

Copying a shape

Expressive vocabulary

Classification/Sorting

Emotional awareness

Inhibitory control

Drawing a human figure

Letter identification

Number identification Empathy

Folding Paper

Emergent writing

Shape identification

Perspective taking

Initial sound discriminatio

n

One-to-one corresponde

nceSelf-

awareness

Listening comprehensi

onSimple

operationsConflict

resolution

Problem solving

Approaches to Learning: Persistence, motivation and engagement

5

5. Study areas, Data collection and MethodologyThere are about 13.42 lakh (1.34 million) operational AWCs across India. In Karnataka, there are 64,518 operational AWCs2. There are 2097 Anganwadi Centers in Bangalore (Urban). For this study, the assessment was conducted in 27 ICDS centres in Bangalore, of which 22 have an intervention of Save the Children through implementing agency and 5 are non-intervention centres. The complete list of Anganwadi is attached as ANNEXURE 1. All the children between the age group of 3.10-6 years who come to the 27 AWCs were selected as the sample size for this assessment. A total of 98 children were assessed across 27 AWCs. Prior consent from the partner organization and the teachers and children were obtained to conduct the study. As the assessment is on school readiness skills among children attending the ICDS Centres, the questionnaire (IDELA structured questionnaire and observation) was administered on the children between the age group 3-6 years. As the children were too young to respond to the questions, only children above 3.10 years were selected for the assessment. The study was conducted among 98 children of whom 56 (about 57%) were female and 42 (43%) were male.On an average, the assessment for each child took about 20 minutes. A mixed approach to data collection were used which consisted of both qualitative and quantitative approach for better understanding of the programme issues so that it will allow analysis on different levels. Rapport was built initially with the children to understand their language and made the child comfortable with the investigator and then the questionnaire was administered.

6. ResultsAn Anganwadi centre is managed by a teacher and an assistant. Anganwadi begins at 9:30 am and ends by 3:30 pm. Once the teacher and the assistant come to the center they prepare the classroom for each day’s learning. The students start coming in and the assistant goes out to get the children from the community in case they have not arrived yet. Children begin their day

2 As on 31.12.2014; source: Ministry of Women and Child Development

6

with a snack (supplied by the Government through the ICDS program), as most children do not eat a breakfast at home. This is followed by circle time class session, and then a break for lunch. In the afternoon, the children take a short nap, then they engage in free play before ending their day at 3:30 pm. In our experience, in several of the Anganwadi Centers visited, children continue coming in till 11:00 am and many children go back home post lunch at 1:30 pm. In other words, we observed a flexible start time at AWC. The localities in which these AWCs were located were heterogeneous in terms of overall infrastructural characteristics. Some of the AWCs had better infrastructure in terms of quality of building, physical space, power supply, running water and toilet facilities. A few AWC were located in the community hall and were closed in case the community hall was being used for any other purpose. One important factor that has to be considered along with the data provided is that, this survey was conducted at the beginning of the academic year. This meant that several children who had joined the class recently were either apprehensive to answer to a stranger or were just beginning to learn. Therefore, there was a high level of non-response or an inability to answer.The sample comprised of 98 children aged 3.10-6 years old from 27 different AWCs. The average age was 4.15 years. There were more girls than boys in the sample with 57% girls and 43% boys. In the sample, we included 16 children from non-intervention AWC to form a comparison group. It was noticed that very few children above the age of 5 were enrolled in the AWCs. The reasons given by the teachers were that parents preferred enrolling children in small private or missionary schools, usually of English instruction rather than Anganwadi. Although the trend of children being enrolled into private schools in rural areas are also there, the prevalence is much higher in urban areas of the State.

7Figure 1: Gender-Wise distribution of total sample

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.1. Non-response analysisAs noted above, there was a high rate of non-response among children. For subsequent analyses, we will treat these non-responses as incorrect responses. However, before doing so we present a brief overview of the missing data along with some rudimentary analysis to determine if there were differences in non-response by age, sex, or intervention status. The weighted average for non-response in each domain is presented in figure 2. The overall non-response rate was nearly 40%. This rate was similar for both Early Literacy and Social-Emotional Development items. Non-response was significantly lower on Early Math items and significantly higher on Motor Development items.

Total I

DELA

Total E

arly M

ath

Total S

ocial-E

motion

al deve

lopmen

t

Total E

arly L

iterac

y

Total M

otor D

evelop

ment

0%10%20%30%40%50%

39% 31% 39% 41% 45%

Figure 2: Non-response by IDELA Domain

After assessing the overall rates of non-response, we next examined if those rates differed by age, sex, and intervention status. Multivariate regression

8

Male Female0102030405060708090

100

42

56

shows that non-response, both overall and for each sub domain, did not differ significantly by background characteristics. Boys and girls and non-intervention and intervention AWCs all had similar response rates. Somewhat surprisingly, non-response also did not differ between older and younger children. While other unobserved factors may have influenced whether or not children responded, the results are encouraging and suggest that the subsequent analysis will not be biased by gender or age.

6.2. Analysis of IDELA domains by ageIn the following sub-sections, the analysis and the results of the four core IDELA domains are presented. Because each task has a different number of questions, we present the average “percent correct” for each task. For the purposes of this and subsequent analyses, we consider non-response an incorrect answer. For example, on the shape identification task (where the child is asked to point to a shape after the name is read), if a child correctly identifies one shape, incorrectly identifies two shapes, and then doesn’t respond to the last two question, we consider their score as 20% (1/5). This practice likely understates the true learning and development status of children, but is a standard step for IDELA analysis throughout the world.And as IDELA is a measure of early learning and development, we present the results by age. We present the average (predicted score) for children at 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5 years old. These points were chosen due to the distribution of ages in the sample. As expected, we find that older children nearly always score significantly higher than the younger children.

9

3.5 4 4.5 50%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

14%

18%

22%

26%

Child's age (in years)

Tota

l IDE

LA %

Cor

rect

Figure 3: Total IDELA % Correct by age

As can be seen in Figure 3, Total IDELA scores were low on average. At the average age of 4.15, children got less than 20% of IDELA items correct after considering non-response as an incorrect score. However, IDELA scores were strongly associated with age. A child’s predicted score at 5 years old (26%) is nearly double the expected score at 3.5 years old (14%).

6.3. Motor DevelopmentThis domain consisted of testing the children on their ability on the following

Copy a triangle Draw: either a girl or a boy who is standing Fold paper: into 4 folds Hop on one leg

The development of motor skills is equally important as the development of cognitive skills. This requires proper facility in terms of space for children for free play, a sand pit and for themed activities. But in almost all the locations of AWCs, there was no playground or even a designated play area. Mostly all the activities were held indoors. This low physical activity reflected in the performance of the children in motor skills.

10

Copying a shape Drawing a person Folding Hopping on one foot

Total Motor Development

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

6% 7%

28%

12% 13%10%

13%

32%

20% 19%

13%

20%

36%

28%25%

17%

27%

41%36%

30%

3.5 years old 4 years old 4.5 years old 5 years oldFigure 4: Motor Development % correct by item by age

The children displayed relatively low motor skills, especially in the fine motor skills of copy a shape and drawing a person. In contrast, the fine motor skill of folding and hopping was relatively high. Hopping appeared to be strongly correlated skill with age: a 5-year-old child was expected score 16 percentage points higher than a 4-year-old child.Total Motor Development is the domain most strongly associated with age. At 3.5 years old, it is expected to be the second weakest domain (after Early Literacy) whereas at 5 years old it is expected to be a child’s strongest domain.

6.4. Early LiteracyIn this domain 6 skills were included which are as follows:

Expressive Vocabulary: Are children able to recall and talk about items they would buy in the market or the animals they are aware of

Print Awareness: Can the child open the book appropriately, recognize where the text begins and the direction of the text

Letter Identification: Are children able to identify the alphabets A-Z in no particular order

Phonemic Awareness: Can a child identify the sound of the first letter Writing: Had 5 levels of scoring from ‘Didn’t write anything’ to ‘wrote

name’, and Listening Comprehension: A story on ‘a cat and a mouse’ was

narrated to each child and later questions regarding the story was asked to assess whether the child could understand the story, recognize the sequence of the story, can recall the story from the memory and analyse the actions of the characters

11

Expre

ssive

vocab

ulary

Print

aware

ness

Letter

ID

Phon

emic a

wareness

Writing

Oral co

mprehe

nsion

Total E

arly L

iterac

y0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%

11%

23%

1% 1% 2%

11% 8%14%

27%

2% 2% 4%

15%11%

17%

31%

3% 3% 6%

18%13%

20%

35%

4% 4%7%

22%15%

3.5 years old 4 years old 4.5 years old 5 years oldFigure 5: Early Literacy % correct by item by age

Given the average age (4.15 years) and the fact that several children have been in the Anganwadi centres for at least a year prior to the assessment, we expected children to be able to recognize letters and sounds. Unfortunately, this appeared not to be the case as the Letter ID, phonemic awareness, and writing scores were extremely low and varied little by age. Only 7% of children were able recognize any letter at all. Print Awareness was by far the most successful task, with most children able to get at least one response correct. When the book was given upside down to the children, 65% of the children responded, with 44% of the total children able to correct the direction of the book, 26% pointed to the text, but only 14% able to point to the direction of the text.Although the questions were asked in the child’s mother tongue, scores on expressive vocabulary were low- they were unable to name animals and grocery items, which the children are very familiar with in their daily lives. It was observed during the assessment that the children were not used to the format of replying to a question or verbally expressing themselves. One of the reasons may be because of the rote learning culture in classrooms with limited interaction and discussions with the teachers

6.5. Early MathThis domain consists of the following:

Measurement: identifying biggest/smallest and longest/shortest Sorting: arranging cards according to shape and colour Shape ID: identification of shapes – circle, rectangle, square, triangle

and identifying a circle in the environment

12

Number Identification: 1 to 20 in no particular order One-to-one correspondence: identifying 3, 8 and 15 items and

understanding that they represent quantity Operations: Addition/Subtraction Puzzle competition

Measu

remen

t

Sortin

g

Shap

e ID

Numbe

r ID

One-to

-one c

orres

pond

ence

Simple

opera

tions

Puzzl

e

Total

Early

Math0%

20%40%60%80%

59%

11%23%

1% 9% 13%0%

17%

64%

16%26%

2%14% 20%

2%21%

68%

21% 29%

3%20%

28%

4%25%

72%

25% 32%

3%

25%36%

6%

29%

3.5 years old 4 years old 4.5 years old 5 years old

Figure 6 Early Math % correct by item by age

It is interesting to note that the measurement task resulted in the highest scores of any one task. On an average, children got over nearly 2/3 questions right. But when it came to sorting, they could not fare nearly as well. Many found it difficult to comprehend that there could be two criteria for sorting. Shape ID resulted in similar scores, with children more familiar with the circle than other shapes.

Number ID resulted in similar scores to Letter ID- very few children were able to get any correct at all. Interestingly, the operations questions resulted in higher average scores than the counting questions in the One-to-one correspondence task. Figures 7 shows clearly that the puzzle was exceptionally difficult for most children. It is very important to note here, that these children are rarely exposed to games like puzzles.

6.6. Social-Emotional DevelopmentThe fourth category is the Social-Emotional domain of the assessment, which includes the following:Self-awareness: children are able to talk about themselvesSocial connections: children able to identify their friends to understand their social behavior, Emotional awareness: children able to identify when they are sad or happy and what is their coping mechanism

13

Empathy: are they able to recognize when their friend is upset and are able to empathize and offer helpConflict: to understand how do children react to conflict; whether they will be positive towards it and understand that they need to share and play or they behave ‘inappropriately’ by feeding to the conflict.

Self-a

wareness

Socia

l conne

ction

s

Emoti

onal A

wareness

Empath

y

Confl

ict re

solutio

n

Total S

ocial-E

motion

al deve

lopmen

t0%

10%20%30%40%50%60%

45%

13% 9% 11%5%

17%

48%

15% 16% 13% 11%20%

51%

16%23%

15% 17%24%

54%

18%29%

17%23% 28%

3.5 years old 4 years old 4.5 years old 5 years old

Figure 7: Average Social-Emotional % correct by item by ageStudents generally performed relatively well on the self-awareness task with the average student correctly answering about half of the questions. Other tasks much lower, with few children able to name more than one friend or get one empathy question correct. Both emotional awareness and conflict resolution tasks appeared to be strongly related to age, with average scores on both items 10% higher at age 5 than age 4.

6.7. Performance by GenderIn each of the domain total scores and the overall IDELA, there were no significant differences by gender. Girls performed slightly worse than boys in each domain, but these differences were small and statistically insignificant. However, as Figure 8 reveals, we do find differences in performance when analysing individual subtasks. Boys performed significantly better than girls on both the Puzzle task and the Phonemic awareness task. Boys also scored marginally better on the Sorting, Simple Operations, and Emotional Awareness subtasks.

14

None of the differences between boys and girls are large enough to be statistically significant in the full domain scores. However, given the very small sample, they cause some concern about the relative performance of girls. While gender differences are common at later times, IDELA rarely sees significant differences at an early age.

Sortin

g

Simple o

peratio

nsPu

zzle

Emoti

onal A

wareness

Phon

emic a

wareness

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

25%~

30%~

5%*

26%~

4%

12%

18%

0%

12%

0%*

Male Female

Note: (~ = p < 0.10; * = p < 0.05)Figure 8: Subtasks with differences by gender

6.8. Performance in Intervention vs. Non-intervention AnganwadiOf the 27 Anganwadi assessed, 21 were supported by Save the Children through implementing agency while 5 were not. Below is the snapshot of the children assessed in the Anganwadi.

  Boys Girls TotalIntervention 36 46 82Non-intervention

6 10 16

Total 42 56 98

Given the small sample size, it is difficult to make strong conclusions about the performance of intervention and non-intervention children. However, the analysis of a multivariate regression controlling for age and gender reveals a

15

stark and significant difference in the performance of intervention vs. non-intervention children. As figure 9 shows, children in non-intervention AWCs performed significantly better than children in intervention AWCs on Early Math, Motor Development, and the overall IDELA score. They also performed marginally better on Early Literacy and Social-Emotional Development.

0%10%20%30%40%

28%* 31%* 31%~

17%~

34%**

17% 20% 20%10%

18%

Non-intervention Intervention

Note: (~ = p < 0.10; * = p < 0.05; ** = p <0.001)Figure 3: Performance in Intervention vs. Non-intervention AWCs

Since the assessment was made at the beginning of the academic year, the trends are sure to change over the course of the year. Further, as stated earlier, these results come from a very small sample. However, they indicate the importance of looking not only at scores at end-line, but the change in scores between baseline and end-line when evaluating the intervention.

7. Observations during AssessmentAs noted already in this report, the assessment was carried out at the beginning of the academic year, where several children had joined in recently and were yet to be comfortable in their new environment. There were numerous occasions where the assessors felt that that while the children knew the answers or the appropriate responses, they felt uncomfortable expressing themselves. This resulted in quite a few ’no responses’ being recorded which may have skewed the data. A comparative study nearer to the end of the academic year should give an interesting analysis.

16

Based on the findings the following are recommended: Effective teacher training geared especially towards providing a child

comfortable, nurturing and joyful learning experience should be provided

Motor training skills should be part of the curriculum More age appropriate material on developing Literacy and Numeracy

skills should be provided Children should be encouraged to express themselves through

interactive question and answer sessions Continuous and effective monitoring of teacher’s performance to

update teaching skills Ensure that male and female students are both receiving adequate

support in their learning by the parents. Surprise visits to the intervention centres to check on irregularities such

as absenteeism of Anganwadi workers and children Incentives/recognition for Anganwadi teachers with exemplary results

could be worked out In future analysis, it will be good to consider baseline differences in

outcomes between intervention and non-intervention schools

17

ANNEXURE 1:

Below is the list of the 27 Anganwadi Center that were visited during the survey/study. 22 Anganwadi Center were supported by Save the Children through implementing agency while 5 were non-intervention AWCs.

S. no. Intervention Anganwadi Centers1 Anant Nagar, Bapujinagar2 Arafat Nagar I (Hosa Gudedehalli)3 Bakshi Garden 14 Bakshi Garden 25 Bakshi Garden 36 Byatarayanapura 17 Byatarayanapura 28 Chalavadipalya9 CSI Anganwadi (Shivajinagar)10 Jag Jeevan Ram Nagar11 Jallymohalla (KRM)12 Janta Colony (Ambedkar Sewa Sangh 1)13 Kasturba Nagar 114 N.S. Garden15 Ramanna Garden I16 Ramanna Garden II17 Sanjay Nagar I18 Sanjay Nagar II19 Timberyard AW (BGJ)20 Venkataraman Nagar21 Vinobanagar22 Vyayamashale (J C Road)

Non-intervention Anganwadis23 Ambedkar Sewa Sangh 224 Ayappa Sewa Sangh I 25 Deepanjalinagar26 MRF Pallya I27 MRF Pallya II

18

19

ANNEXURE 2:

1. NUTRITION: This includes supplementary feeding and growth monitoring; and prophylaxis against vitamin A deficiency and control of nutritional anaemia. All families in the community are surveyed, to identify children below the age of six and pregnant & nursing mothers. By providing supplementary feeding, the Anganwadi attempts to bridge the caloric gap between the national recommended and average intake of children and women in low income and disadvantaged communities.

2. GROWTH MONITORING: Growth Monitoring and nutrition surveillance are two important activities that are undertaken. Children below the age of three years of age are weighed once a month and children 3-6 years of age are weighed quarterly. Weight-forage growth cards are maintained for all children below six years. This helps to detect growth faltering and helps in assessing nutritional status. Besides, severely malnourished children are given special supplementary feeding and referred to medical services

3. IMMUNIZATION: Immunization of pregnant women and infants protects children from six vaccine preventable diseases-poliomyelitis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, tuberculosis and measles. These are major preventable causes of child mortality, disability, morbidity and related malnutrition. Immunization of pregnant women against tetanus also reduces maternal and neonatal mortality.

4. HEALTH CHECK-UP: This includes health care of children less than six years of age, antenatal care of expectant mothers and postnatal care of nursing mothers. The various health services provided for children by Anganwadi workers and Primary Health Centre (PHC) staff, include regular health check-ups, recording of weight, immunization, management of malnutrition, treatment of diarrhoea, de-worming and distribution of simple medicines etc. Growth charts monitor children’s weight and height according to age

5. REFERRAL SERVICES: During health check-ups and growth monitoring, sick or malnourished children, in need of prompt medical attention, are referred to the Primary Health Centre or its sub-centre. The anganwadi worker has also been oriented to detect disabilities in young children. She enlists all such cases in a special register and refers them to the medical officer of the Primary Health Centre/ Sub-centre. 6. Nutrition and Health Education: Nutrition and Health Education is a key element of the work of the Anganwadi worker. This forms part of BCC (Behaviour Change Communication) strategy. This

20

has the long term goal of capacity-building of women – especially in the age group of 15-45 years – so that they can look after their own health, nutrition and development needs as well as that of their children and families.

6. ANGANWADI CENTRE: Population Norms: For Rural/Urban Projects 400-800 - 1 AWC 800- 1600 - 2 AWCs 1600-2400 - 3 AWCs Thereafter in multiples of 800 -1 AWC For Mini AWC 150-400 -1 Mini AWC. For Tribal /Riverine/Desert, Hilly and other difficult areas/ Projects 300-800 - 1 AWC For Mini- AWC 150-300 1 Mini AWC at present there are Anganwadi Centres and Mini Anganwadi Centres in Karnataka

7. SUPPLEMENTARY NUTRITION: Beneficiary Pre-Revised w.e.f. Feb. 2009 Calories Protein Calories Protein (KCal) (G) (KCal) (Gm)Children (6-72 months) 300 8-10 500 12-15months); severely malnourished children (6-72 months) 600 20 800 20-25; Pregnant & Lactating women 500 15-20 600 18-20 9.

8. TRAINING INFRASTRUCTURE: Anganwadi Workers Training Centers (AWTCs) Middle Level Training Centers (MLTCs) National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) and its Regional Centers 11

9. INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS: United Nations International Children’ Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) World Food Programme (WFP)

21