Kathmandu, June 19:

The Department of Education (DoE) is planning to establish an additional 3,500 Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres throughout the country.

Speaking at a programme here today, Janardan Nepal, the director general of DoE, said, “The DoE has established 16,523 ECD centres so far and it is planning to add 3,500 more in the next year.”

He added that the DoE was working to meet the goal of ‘Education for All’ by 2015 and also meet the target of establishing 74,000 ECD centres by 2009. “The issue of increasing the number of ECD centres is on the top of the DoE’s list. However, there is a vast gap between priority and implementation in our country,” Nepal said.