PRE-PRIMARY TEACHERS & TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN MEGHALAYA

Early Childhood Education (ECE) is an integral part of the school education, which has a strong bearing especially upon primary education and an important component for achieving universal enrolment and retention in primary schools. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) on Early Childhood Education (ECE), 2005 recommended that, the training of professional in the field of early childhood require new thinking about the careful consideration on the issue to create training programmes that will provide opportunities to teachers to teach in any programme catering up to 8 years and enhancing the capacity of existing training institutions. It is to be mentioned that there are scant facilities for teacher preparation in the area of ECE in the education sector as far as Meghalaya is concerned. The nursery teacher training institutions in pre-primary education is negligible or not available in the state. Due to lack of such facilities in Meghalaya and lack of human resource in this area, the quality of ECE has remained a big concern. DERT & DIETs are also inadequately equipped in conducting training programme in ECE effectively. With this concern the investigator felt the need to investigate on pre-primary teacher's profile and the training programmes for ECE in Meghalaya.