Started in the year 1975 by Indian government, Anganwadis are doing peerless job to provide health facilities and basic care to children in all the Indian villages. In the state, every anganwadi or pre-school is almost 500 metre away from a government school. This very short distance suggested the obvious merger of pre-school or anganwadi with the government school to provide better facilities.
Thus, taking this into consideration, the state education department has come up with a merger plan of both the government institutes. The new rule suggests that, to bring an improvement in the learning outcomes, letter reading and alphabet recording by students of primary classes.
Currently, Rajasthan state has 61,000 anganwadis or pre-schools, nurturing over 15 lakh students between the age group of 3 to 6 years. Out of these, 13,000 anganwadis will be revamped under this plan for the first phase.
They are expecting to complete the first phase within a month with providing a separate room for pre-school students within the school premises. Here, these children will provided all learning facilities with toys and everything.
This has been taken into consideration, to bring a positive transformation in the current learning outcomes which are going below the levels. As the authorities have explained, many of these pre-schools are situated at unhealthy and unhygienic places which is playing a major role in the poor performance. Further, the department also explained that, the motive of ICDS (Integrated Child and Development Services) is not limited to pre-primary education of children, but also considers the health of pregnant women as well.
With this progression, state anganwadis will have to work harder to improve the bad figures of enrolment of lower of age group children in pres-schools. The current data says that, in the age group of 3 years, 37.3% children are deprived of pre-primary education. At the age group of 4 years, 51.2% students are not attending any pre-schools.