{"id":38236,"date":"2023-11-20T04:48:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T23:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=38236"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:08:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T03:38:05","slug":"age-of-admission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/age-of-admission\/","title":{"rendered":"The debate over appropriate age of admission to Class 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why in news?<\/li>\n<li>What does the NEP 2020 say about the minimum age to admit students in Class 1?<\/li>\n<li>What does the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 say about the age of entry for Class 1?<\/li>\n<li>Opinions of academicians on this issue<\/li>\n<li>What does research say about the entry age for formal education?<\/li>\n<li>What is the age to start formal education across the world in various countries?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why in news?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Schools in Delhi this year will continue to admit students to Class 1 below the age of 6 years.<\/li>\n<li>This is contrary to recent letters from the Union government to all states, urging them to align the age of entry to Class 1 with the new National Education Policy 2020.<\/li>\n<li>According to a response furnished by the Union government in the Lok Sabha, there are wide variations in the age criteria among states when it comes to admission to Class 1.\n<ul>\n<li>There were 14 States and Union Territories, as of March 2022, that allow Class 1 admission for children who have not completed six years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What does the NEP 2020 say about the minimum age to admit students in Class 1?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The new NEP pitches for a \u201c5+3+3+4\u201d design for formal schooling corresponding to:\n<ul>\n<li>the age groups 3-8 years (foundational stage),<\/li>\n<li>8-11 years (preparatory stage),<\/li>\n<li>11-14 years (middle stage), and<\/li>\n<li>14-18 years (secondary stage).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>This brings early childhood education (also known as pre-school education for children of ages 3 to 5 years) under the ambit of formal schooling.<\/li>\n<li>This effectively means that a <u>child should be 6 years old to be eligible for admission into Class 1, after completing three years of early childhood education<\/u>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What does the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 say about the age of entry for Class 1?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The <u>RTE Act guarantees education from the age of 6 years to 14 years<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>This means that a child is expected to begin elementary education (i.e., Class 1) at the age of 6 years.<\/li>\n<li>RTE Act had to specify the entry age for enforcement of formal compulsory education.<\/li>\n<li>This has been ignored even now by many States leading to the confusion of the actual age for admitting students grade1.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Opinions of academicians on this issue<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>As per the academicians in India:\n<ul>\n<li>The age of 6 years was identified considering the universal age that most countries across the world have been following, i.e., to admit a child into grade one at the age of 6 or 7.<\/li>\n<li>The age 6, which the RTE says is the age to begin Class 1, is simply a reiteration of what has already been a part of our Constitution.<\/li>\n<li>This was also the same in Gandhi\u2019s idea of basic education.<\/li>\n<li>It was also stated in the report of the Sargent Commission (on post-war education development in India), which goes back to the 1940s.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What does research say about the entry age for formal education?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>As per the research conducted by David Whitebread, from the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University:\n<ul>\n<li>the early introduction of formal learning approaches to literacy does not improve children\u2019s reading development, and may be damaging.<\/li>\n<li>By the age of 11, there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups.<\/li>\n<li>But the children who started at 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading and showed poorer text comprehension than those children who had started later.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>In a separate study of reading achievement in 15-year-olds across 55 countries, researchers showed that there was no significant association between reading achievement and school entry age.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What is the age to start formal education across the world in various countries?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Six is the standard age for starting primary school across East Asia, not just in Japan.<\/li>\n<li>This age is also common in most European countries.\n<ul>\n<li>It is usual (though not compulsory) for younger children in these societies to attend some sort of preschool.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>However, in the USA and the UK children generally start school at 5.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1)\u00a0What is Sargent Commission?<\/h3>\n<p>The Sargent Scheme, formally known as the Report of the Sargent Commission on Post-War Education Development in India, was a 1944 memorandum prepared at the behest of the British-run Government of India that outlined the future development of literacy and education in India.<\/p>\n<h3>Q2)\u00a0What was the aim of Gandhi\u2019s idea of basic education?<\/h3>\n<p>The aim of Gandhiji&#8217;s basic education was to educate the students on crafts which would enable them to solve the problems of their livelihood and at the same time develop qualities of good citizenship.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/appropriate-age-admission-class-1-9027925\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Explained: The debate over appropriate age of admission to Class 1<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new NEP pitches for a \u201c5+3+3+4\u201d design for formal schooling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":38237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}