Upgrade in sight

The Purnea district administration has decided to upgrade anganwadi centres into playschools to ensure quality education to children.

A fortnight ago, the district administration had presented a design for playschools to the social welfare department, along with the syllabus it planned to adopt. With the proposal being approved by the department, the administration has decided to upgrade 931 anganwadi centres from among the 3,000-plus centres in the district.

The administration has earmarked land for each anganwadi centre where the playschool building would be constructed.

The move to upgrade the anganwadi centres is aimed at not only ensuring children in villages are well fed at the anganwadi centres but also benefit from facilities that their counterparts in urban areas enjoy.

Purnea district magistrate Manish Kumar Verma told The Telegraph: “The purpose of the anganwadi centres is to impart pre-school training to kids and feed them to check malnutrition. We have developed a model of playschool for anganwadi centres. Till today, there is no syllabus for pre-schooling at anganwadi centres, but we are preparing a syllabus. We will also make available a set of free books in accordance with the syllabus.”

Sumit Bharti, a teacher at Kamalpur government middle school in the district, said: “The district administration’s move to upgrading the anganwadi centres into playschools is a welcome step. We have children between six and 10 years at the school but they are not familiar with the alphabets. The playschools will certainly help enhance the quality of education in government school too.”

Every panchayat will have at least one such upgraded playschool, spread around 850sqft, and the government will spend around Rs 7.48 lakh each on the 931 schools. The playschool campus would include a hall, a maternal health check-up room and an open area where the children can play.

The administration will select the best anganwadi sevikas for training them to teach the children in the playschools. The syllabus being prepared has been based on that followed by the Kidzee playschool.