KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 21
One out of five children between the ages of two and four years in Nepal is not developing properly amidst the COV- ID pandemic, new data from UNICEF shows. The pandemic has especially affected the health, learning, and psychosocial well-being of children.
The Early Childhood Development Index survey shows that children from lower income families living in rural areas with caregivers without or low levels of education, and not attending early childhood education programmes, are at higher risk of being developmentally off-track.
Even among children who attended ECE, those who attended government ECE were at higher risk of being developmentally off-track compared to those who attended private programmes.
ECDI survey is a phonebased survey conducted among a nationally representative sample of 2,853 households with children to understand the development needs and status of young children aged two to four years.
According to a press release issued by UNICEF Nepal yesterday, early stimulation activities with caregivers such as reading books, telling stories, singing songs, going outside, naming objects, counting, or drawing things were found to be important for young children's development and learning.
However, the data alarmingly revealed a plunge in parental engagement compared to pre-pandemic conditions.
In this situation, especially at the time when people's lives were affected by loosening of the prohibitory orders in August 2021, only 31 per cent of children received early stimulation at home from family members compared to 73 per cent in 2019. From follow-up survey in October, it was found that mothers' engagement improved over time as they got over the hectic time of returning to normalcy from the strict prohibitory order. However, fathers' engagement remained low (6 per cent), maintaining a frequent social norm of fathers' reduced involvement in parenting.
Half of the surveyed children were found to be enrolled in pre-primary level. However, during school closure, 34 per cent of children did not engage in learning through alternative learning modalities at all. Most of the children accessed home tuition, while alternative learning modalities specified by the government's Emergency Action Plan (e.g., online class, mobile teacher, radio, TV, tele-teaching) were underused. Low-tech solutions, such as educational radio and TV and tele-teaching were almost unused. Hightech solutions like online class were used almost exclusively among children who attended private ECE. Underused lowtech solutions and unequal access to high-tech solutions might have contributed to the developmental gap observed between children who attended private ECE and other children.
Based on the results of the survey and to ensure that all children realised their development potentials and became ready for further learning, UNICEF called upon the government, development partners, teachers, parents and other stakeholders to target children who are at high risk of becoming developmentally off-track through effective interventions for remedial learning.
Similarly, UNICEF has urged them to develop systems to support teachers and parents to understand each child's individual development and learning level, utilise alternative learning modalities specified in the National Emergency Action Plan in times of school closures, strengthen parenting education, and enhance early stimulation activities by parents such as reading child-friendly books, telling stories, singing songs, taking children outside, playing with them, naming objects, counting, or drawing things together.
A version of this article appears in the print on December 22, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
