Author: Smile Foundation

When you meet a young girl like Debasmita, it becomes clear how fragile the path to education can be for millions of Indian children. She grew up in a family where every rupee mattered. Her father, a tailor, lost his job during the pandemic. Her mother began working longer hours as a domestic worker. In the middle of economic upheaval and personal uncertainty, school suddenly seemed like a privilege her family could no longer afford.

For children like her, dropping out is not a dramatic decision. It is a gradual dimming of possibilities. A missed week turns into a missed month. Household responsibilities grow. Textbooks gather dust. Before long, the idea of returning to school becomes a distant memory.

But Debasmita’s story diverged from this familiar arc. A merit-based scholarship from Smile Foundation allowed her to continue her education, reclaiming a dream she had almost lost. Today she speaks of studying science, pursuing biotechnology and ensuring that girls in her community do not disappear from the classroom the way she nearly did.

Her determination is inspiring, but her vulnerability is not unique. It reflects a deeper truth about India’s development story: that marginalised children continue to face multiple, overlapping disadvantages that push them out of the system. And that NGOs, often operating quietly in the background, serve as the connective tissue in an education ecosystem where government systems are stretched and resource-starved.

Where We Are Falling Short

India has made undeniable progress. Primary enrollment levels are high, awareness about schooling is widespread and the Right to Education Act has set clear obligations for state accountability. Yet the lived reality of children reveals persistent structural cracks.

Many children enter school without the foundational skills required for learning. Millions struggle with basic reading and arithmetic well into their primary years. The ASER report has long shown this trend: enrollment is not the same as learning. The early years are especially critical, yet early childhood education remains fragmented, uneven and often inaccessible to low-income families.

Classrooms that should be nurturing become transactional. Administrative compliance takes precedence over joyful learning. Teachers are burdened with documentation, school inspections and electoral duties, leaving little time for actual pedagogy. The system often rewards attendance and infrastructure, not comprehension and critical thinking.

Girls face challenges embedded in social norms and household hierarchies. Domestic chores, sibling care, early marriage, inadequate sanitation, safety concerns and various restrictions on mobility routinely derail their schooling. Boys face a different set of pressures. Many are pushed into work early to supplement family income.

Malnutrition remains one of the biggest and most understated barriers to learning. A child who is hungry or anaemic cannot concentrate, retain information or engage emotionally in a classroom. Even when meals are available, erratic attendance caused by migration, seasonal labour and health issues breaks continuity.

These challenges do not exist in silos. They feed into one another, compounding disadvantage over time.

Where NGOs Step In: Closing Education Gaps the System Cannot Address Alone

It is within this complex terrain that NGOs have become essential actors in India’s education landscape. Their advantage lies in three things: proximity to communities, agility in responding to evolving needs and deep contextual understanding of children’s lives.

Across the country, NGOs are not just teaching children. They are building systems, scaffolding families and nudging communities toward long-term change. They operate in areas where government systems are thin and private actors see no market.

Here are some of the key players in this space, each addressing different but interconnected aspects of the education gaps.

Strengthening Foundational Learning

Pratham’s Teaching at the Right Level model has transformed remedial education in India. By grouping children by ability instead of age, they enable faster progress in literacy and numeracy. This model has been adopted by multiple state governments and studied by international researchers for its low-cost, high-impact structure.

Central Square Foundation’s #FoundationHaiSahi campaign has raised national attention around the crucial role foundational literacy and numeracy play in shaping future learning. Their policy advocacy has helped shift conversations from enrolment figures to learning outcomes.

Empowering Girls

The challenges girls face exist both inside and outside classrooms. Organisations like CRY intervene through community mobilisation, sustained engagement with parents and direct work with girls. They address key social barriers, whether it is early marriage, gendered labour expectations or safety concerns.

Nanhi Kali and Smile Foundation expand the support ecosystem for girls by providing academic assistance, mentorship, digital learning opportunities and school supplies. Smile Foundation’s programmes also focus on changing family attitudes, ensuring that girls are not forced to choose between household work and education.

Improving Teaching Quality

Teach For India addresses the core challenge of teaching quality by placing trained fellows in under-resourced schools. Their fellows bring new pedagogical practices, energy and aspirational environments into classrooms. Equally important is their alumni network, which influences policy, leads innovations and often works directly with government systems to shift how learning is delivered.

Creating Holistic Support Systems for Vulnerable Children

Smile Foundation’s approach stands out for its holistic lens. Education is only one piece of a larger puzzle that includes nutrition, health care, emotional well-being, digital literacy and livelihood skills. Their Mission Education centres are designed not just as classrooms but as safe, supportive environments where children receive academic support, nutrition, counselling, life skills and confidence-building.

They also involve local communities, ensuring that progress is not temporary but reinforced by families and neighbourhoods that see the value of keeping children in school. This long-term investment creates a chain of protection around each child, making dropout less likely and aspiration more sustainable.

Improving School Environments

Goonj has expanded the idea of what a school needs to be. Their work emphasises functional infrastructure, dignity and safe spaces. By fixing classrooms, creating learning aids and improving sanitation, they strengthen conditions that enable learning for children who are often ignored in policy debates.

Addressing Nutrition and Health

For many children, health is a silent barrier to education. Smile Foundation’s nutrition and health programmes provide health check-ups, deworming, nutrition counselling for caregivers and support for children with recurrent illnesses. By improving physical well-being, they improve learning readiness.

Akshaya Patra has transformed school nutrition through its large-scale mid-day meal programme. For many children, this is the most reliable nutritious meal of their day. Their work has increased attendance and contributed to better learning outcomes.

Why NGOs Matter: The Deeper Argument

NGOs have become essential because they can weave together the many threads affecting children’s educational journeys. Government systems, even when well-intentioned, operate on scale and speed that cannot always adapt to local complexities. Many families who live on the margins face problems that require personalised support, persistent follow-up and cultural familiarity. This is where NGOs excel.

Their value lies not only in service delivery but in their ability to understand the messiness of children’s lived realities. They are present in rural hamlets, urban settlements, tribal belts, border regions and migrant households. They listen, respond and adapt. They bridge the last-mile gap through relationships built over years.

And perhaps most importantly, they bring dignity into the conversation. They view each child not as a number on a school register but as someone with potential, aspirations and the right to opportunities that many of us take for granted.

Their work does not replace the role of the state. Instead, it complements it, strengthens it and, at times, gently pushes it toward greater inclusion.

Building a Future Where No Child Is Left Behind

For India to move forward, education must be understood not only as a policy priority but as a moral one. We often talk about the demographic dividend, but that dividend is not automatic. It must be built, nurtured and supported at every stage of childhood.

NGOs like Smile Foundation, Pratham, CRY, Nanhi Kali, Teach For India, Goonj and Akshaya Patra show us what is possible when compassion meets strategy and when communities become partners in the process. Their work demonstrates that education is not limited to classrooms. It is strengthened by nutrition, mental health, parental support, safe spaces and exposure to ideas that ignite imagination.

Debasmita’s story is not only a testament to her resilience but a reminder of the invisible architecture that supports children like her. NGOs form a part of this architecture, filling the voids between policy intent and lived reality. They remind us that progress is not measured by enrolment graphs alone, but by how many children stay, learn, thrive and dream.

If we want to build an India where every child has an equal chance to succeed, then strengthening these partnerships between government, communities, NGOs and the private sector is not optional. It is essential.

Across India, our public conversations on school education tend to orbit around infrastructure, examinations and learning outcomes. These concerns are understandable, but they often narrow our imagination about what education ought to be. A meaningful education must enable children to inquire, collaborate and participate fully in civic and social life. Play, long dismissed as peripheral to learning, is in fact central to achieving these objectives.

There is now compelling global evidence that play is a foundational element of learning. Neuroscience, developmental psychology and comparative education research converge on one conclusion. Children learn best when they engage actively with their environment, when they test ideas freely and when they feel secure in spaces that welcome their curiosity. Play is the medium that allows these processes to unfold.

But access to play continues to be uneven and, in many cases, restricted precisely for the children who need it most. This raises a larger question about the purpose of schooling in a constitutional democracy. If education must nurture capabilities equitably, then play cannot be reserved for the privileged. It must belong to every child.

What Science Tells Us About Play

Research at the Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University shows how play develops executive function skills such as memory, self-regulation and cognitive flexibility. These skills form the mental architecture required to navigate both academic learning and future employment.

Play also strengthens social and emotional development. When children negotiate rules of a game or engage in pretend play, they practice empathy, cooperation and compromise. UNESCO’s review of play-based learning emphasises that play improves motivation, attention and emotional well-being.

Crucially, play enhances academic performance. A 2022 paper in Frontiers in Education shows that play-based classrooms improve conceptual understanding and retention in primary school. This directly challenges the misconception that play distracts from academic goals.

Physical play contributes to cognitive growth as well. A 2025 Times of India report noted how physical education strengthens focus and executive functioning, making games periods one of the most effective learning hours in school.

The science is clear. A child who plays learns better, participates better and adapts better.

Why Play Is a Question of Equity

A significant challenge in India is that the benefits of play-rich learning environments accrue disproportionately to children in well-resourced schools. High-fee private institutions often showcase spacious playgrounds, flexible timetables and activity-based curricula. In contrast, schools that serve working class families or marginalised communities tend to adopt more restrictive pedagogies that rely heavily on repetition and discipline. These approaches are often justified as a fast track to academic improvement, but they typically achieve the opposite.

The absence of play has severe implications for children who begin school with fewer social and linguistic advantages. First-generation learners benefit immensely from exploratory learning, tactile materials and peer collaboration, yet they are most frequently denied these experiences.

Similarly, children with disabilities face exclusion due to inaccessible play spaces and a lack of inclusive training for teachers. Girls are restricted by social norms that limit mobility and exposure to outdoor spaces. Tribal and rural children often study in environments where there are neither resources nor trained educators who can facilitate playful learning.

This unequal distribution of play contradicts the constitutional promise of equal educational opportunity. Play is not ornamental. It is a mechanism through which children build the capabilities to learn, communicate and participate fully in society. By restricting play, we inadvertently impose a hierarchy of educational experience, reinforcing existing social inequalities.

Play in Older Grades

A common assumption is that play belongs solely in pre-primary classrooms. In reality, the cognitive and social benefits of play extend well beyond early childhood. The Lego Foundation highlights that playful pedagogies improve problem solving, creativity and collaboration even for adolescents.

Finland, New Zealand and Scotland provide strong examples of primary schools that integrate play into learning across subjects. Students engage in projects, outdoor exploration and hands-on tasks that connect academic content to lived experience. These systems demonstrate that play can coexist with rigor and often strengthens it.

India has taken small steps in this direction. The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) calls for experiential learning and recommends periodic “bagless” days. States such as Uttar Pradesh have introduced ten activity-based days annually.

These policies are promising but insufficient unless accompanied by teacher training, decentralised curriculum design and clear accountability frameworks.

Teacher Capacity and Systemic Barriers

Teachers are central to whether play becomes meaningful in the classroom. However, teacher education programmes in India devote limited time to child development sciences or hands-on pedagogy. Many teachers believe that play creates disorder or undermines discipline. Without adequate support, they feel constrained by syllabus pressures and parental expectations.

Successful integration of play requires systemic attention to teacher training. Countries that embraced play-based education invested in continuous professional development, classroom observation and peer mentoring. India must follow a similar path.

Infrastructure gaps also hinder playful learning. Many government schools lack safe outdoor areas, accessible classrooms or basic materials. Budget allocations for ECCE and primary education remain inadequate and often do not prioritise play materials or teacher training.

A Global Perspective on Play

Experiences from across the world demonstrate that play is compatible with scale and resource constraints.

Zambia’s IT’S PLAY programme, implemented by the government with UNESCO’s support, trained educators in playful methods and reached more than 18,000 children. This approach is low-cost and community grounded.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom continues to reckon with shrinking playtime due to academic pressures. A 2025 Guardian report found that a third of children no longer play outdoors after school.

These global debates reflect a common concern. Modern education systems risk becoming overly instrumental, focusing almost exclusively on measurable outcomes while ignoring childhood itself. Play becomes a corrective to this narrow vision.

Why Play Matters for India’s Learning Crisis

ASER reports repeatedly show that a large share of children in Class 5 cannot read Class 2 text or solve basic arithmetic. Traditional pedagogies that prioritise textbook recitation seldom close these gaps. Play, by contrast, elevates engagement and enables conceptual mastery. Manipulatives, stories, experiments and games help children internalise ideas rather than memorise them.

Play also supports mental health. For children living with economic stress, unsafe environments or interrupted schooling, play creates emotional safety and restores confidence. This is vital in classrooms where children carry the burdens of poverty and uncertainty.

Smile Foundation’s Work: Restoring Joy to Learning

Smile Foundation has consistently recognised that quality education cannot be reduced to textbooks and examinations. Through Mission Education, the organisation integrates activity-based and play-led methods into classrooms that serve children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Interactive learning materials, group activities, storytelling and sports become tools for foundational learning.

For many first-generation learners, these classroom experiences are transformative. They build confidence, communication skills and a genuine interest in learning. Smile Foundation’s work shows that play can be implemented in low-resource settings through thoughtful teacher support, community involvement and simple, child-friendly materials.

Our approach affirms a broader truth. Play is not an educational luxury. It is an essential part of a child’s right to learn with dignity, agency and joy.

India’s education system stands at a crossroads. We have the research, the policy frameworks and the evidence from both domestic and international contexts. What remains is a commitment to reorient how we understand learning. Play is not peripheral to academic achievement. It is fundamental to the development of capable, confident and compassionate citizens.

A school system that denies play denies equality. A school system that embraces it moves closer to fulfilling the constitutional promise of a just and inclusive future for all children.

As of the last decade, India has achieved a major milestone: net primary enrolment rose from 89% in 2010 to around 98% as of 2024/2025 and yet, many enrolled children still struggle to master basic reading and arithmetic. Government schemes, community mobilisation and NGO-led efforts have collectively ensured that access to education is no longer the primary barrier it once was and more children go to school today than ever before. But beneath this success lies another crisis: children may be in school, but many are not learning at the level they should be.

Reports over the years, from national surveys to independent learning assessments, consistently highlight the same gap. A substantial proportion of children in upper primary grades struggle to comprehend simple texts or perform basic arithmetic. These gaps do not arise suddenly. They accumulate slowly, often beginning in early childhood and widening each year as lessons become more complex.

Remedial Classes play a significant role in trying to bridge this gap. A structured, intentional and child-centred approach to help students strengthen the foundational skills they might have missed in their early school years. Besides most primary and elementary schools, organisations like Smile Foundation have adapted and expanded it within the Indian context.

Where the Idea of Remedial Classes Began

Remedial education is not a new idea, it has existed in various forms around the world for more than a century. Early versions emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries when schools in Europe and North America began to recognise that children do not learn at the same pace. Some required more time, some needed repetition and some needed individual guidance that was impossible to provide in overcrowded classrooms.

Psychologists and educators like Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget and John Dewey transformed global thinking by showing that learning is not linear and children must be met where they are. Their insights laid the groundwork for modern remedial programmes that recognise gaps not as failures, but as differentiated requirements in learning journeys.

By the late 20th century, remedial education had become a formal component of schooling systems in many countries, especially in areas with higher poverty, linguistic diversity and socio-political conflicts. However, all across the core idea stayed the same: meet children at their current learning level and guide them forward with patient, individualised support.

Why Remedial Classes Became Essential in India 

Over the past three decades, India has made remarkable strides in expanding access to education. Net enrolment rates in primary education rose from around 78% in 1990-91 to nearly 97% by 2020-21, driven by initiatives such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Right to Education Act (2009). Yet, large-scale assessments, including the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), revealed a persistent learning crisis, that many children were attending school, but lagging behind in basic reading and arithmetic. In 2022, ASER reported that only 50% of Grade 5 students in rural India could read a Grade 2-level text and fewer than 40% could perform simple division.

Several systemic factors contributed to this widening gap:

• Large class sizes: Student-teacher ratios in many government schools exceed 40:1, limiting individual attention.
  
• First-generation learners: Millions of children attend school without academic guidance at home.
  
• Socio-economic tensions: Migration, seasonal work, limited parental support and poverty-related disruptions reduce school attendance and continuity.
  
• Curriculum challenges: A rigid, content-heavy curriculum often advances faster than students’ comprehension.
  
• Language barriers: Children from multilingual households may struggle when the medium of instruction differs from their home language.
  

These challenges created a structural gap where enrolment alone could not ensure learning. Smile Foundation’s Remedial Education Programme directly addresses these deficits by offering small-group sessions, personalised guidance and academic reinforcement. 

Why Remedial Classes Are More Important Today Than Ever

Even as India makes strides in digital education, infrastructure and policy reforms, remedial classes continue to play a critical role. Here’s why they remain indispensable:

Rebuilding foundations

Foundational skills in reading, writing and numeracy are the building blocks of all future learning. Remedial classes focus on strengthening these without the pressure of exams or rigid timetables. By allowing children to revisit earlier concepts in a stress-free setting, these sessions help them rebuild core competencies that may have weakened over time. As these foundations solidify, children gradually regain the ability to engage confidently with grade-level content.

Restoring confidence in children 

Many children internalise academic struggles as personal failure. When concepts are explained with individualised attention and patience, children regain the lost confidence and rediscover the joy of understanding. Small successes like solving a problem, reading aloud, completing homework independently act as powerful motivators. Over time, these repeated affirmations rebuild self-esteem, helping children participate more actively in their regular classrooms and trust their own abilities again.

Reducing dropout rates

One of the strongest predictors of dropping out is poor academic performance, especially at the upper primary level. The remedial sessions help close learning gaps that, if ignored, often push students toward frustration or disengagement. With remedial support, children feel capable, stay motivated and remain in school for longer. 

Supporting learners under stress

For children living under financial stress or with limited parental support, remedial spaces provide consistency, emotional safety and academic stability. Alongside academics, Smile Foundation’s Mission Education project also focuses on emotional well-being through attentive teachers and a nurturing environment. In doing so, the programme becomes a stabilising force in the lives of children who might otherwise slip through the cracks of the formal school system.

Helping first-generation learners break the cycle of educational disadvantage

When parents cannot guide children academically, remedial classes fill the gap and help build upward mobility across generations. These sessions give first-generation learners the academic reinforcement they usually cannot access at home. Over time, this consistent guidance strengthens not just individual performance but also reduces the likelihood of future dropouts.

Building inclusive and neuro-diverse classrooms 

By supplementing formal teaching, remedial programmes ensure that slow learners and linguistically diverse children are not left behind. They create flexible learning spaces where children with diverse  cognitive styles or learning needs can engage with material at a pace that suits them. 

The Broader Impact: Remedial Education as a Tool for Equity

Remedial classes create a ripple effect that extends far beyond academics, influencing entire communities in meaningful ways. They promote gender equity by supporting girls who often shoulder household responsibilities, offering them structured study time and emotional encouragement to stay on track. These programmes also strengthen community trust in education, as parents who witness steady improvement in their children begin to prioritise schooling even when facing financial pressures. Remedial support also enhances teacher effectiveness by reducing the need to repeatedly reteach foundational concepts, allowing teachers to focus on delivering the curriculum with greater depth. Most importantly, early intervention through remedial classes keeps learning gaps from escalating, paving the way for children to participate fully in future academic opportunities.

A Community-Rooted Solution With a Child at Its Center

Smile Foundation’s journey with remedial education underscores a simple truth – children do not fail learning systems; learning systems fail children when they don’t account for diversity learning styles and pace. Remedial classes offer a humane response to this gap. They ensure that children who start with disadvantages are not permanently defined by them. They give slow learners time, give shy children confidence, give first-generation learners a level playing field and give parents the reassurance that their child’s future is not slipping away quietly.

Why Remedial Classes Will Continue to Matter

As India aims for higher literacy and a skilled workforce, learning outcomes and not just enrolments, will determine the nation’s progress. Remedial classes stand at this intersection of academic need, social equity and giving each learner a fair chance at school. They are not a temporary patch but a long-term investment in human potential.

And at their heart lies a simple, enduring belief – Every child deserves not just a seat in a classroom, but a real chance to learn, grow and thrive.

For young Debasmita, continuing her education after the 8th grade was a challenge. Her father, who worked as a tailor, was out of work for about two years during the pandemic. She was on the brink of dropping out when Smile Foundation’s merit-based scholarship allowed her to continue her education. Today, she dreams of helping girls in her community pursue their studies. Like Debasmita, many deserving students lose out on quality education because of limited means. For academically-gifted students who come from low-income homes, the promise of higher education feels like a mirage, until scholarships intervene. Even though there’s a roster of national and local scholarships available for deserving candidates, the impact continues to be limited. 

A Look at the Numbers 

The National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme (NMMSS) launched by the Ministry of Education, in order to offer one lakh fresh scholarships every year for students entering Class IX, continuing through to Class XII. As of 2023–24, around 2.50 lakh scholarships were sanctioned, with a budget of approximately Rs. 300 crore. However, while, on paper, the scheme is straightforward (reward talent, retain students and reduce drop-out rates) the reality is more complex. 

Data suggests that despite the noble intent, NMMSS has struggled to maintain its scale. Between 2017–18 and 2021–22, the number of scholarships granted under the scheme plunged by 51.9 per cent, according to parliamentary replies. In the same period, among the most marginalised groups — Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) — the drop is, in fact, stark. While SC recipients of the scholarship fell from 58,307 in 2020–21 to 48,116 in 2021–22, pointing at a 17 per cent decline, ST recipients dropped from 22,562 to 16,460 which is a 27 per cent fall in that year. 

This dramatic decline is tied to broader systemic issues in the country. While the budget for scholarships has positively grown over the last few years, the number of beneficiaries has fallen in several key schemes. For instance, central funding for the Post-Matric Scholarship for SC students nearly doubled, from around Rs. 2,710 crore in 2019–20 to Rs. 5,475 crore in 2023–24, yet the number of SC students receiving the scholarship fell from 54.27 lakh to 47.39 lakh, a drop of 12.7 per cent. 

In response to these rather staggering numbers, experts and policy analysts point to several administrative bottlenecks. A major problem has been disbursement delays. The National Scholarship Portal that administers many of these scholarships demands multi-level verifications. Additionally, strict Aadhaar linkage, documentation issues and technical glitches often derail timely payments, causing eligible students to fall off or forfeit the award altogether.

In fact, another problem is the sheer lack of access to information about the scholarships available. Many deserving students from disadvantaged areas never even get to apply. For those who do, maintaining eligibility year after year, especially at times of renewal, poses to be difficult as academic performance must be sustained and the procedural burden (income proofs, verification) can be demanding. Without adequate advisory and material support, families may end up giving up. 

The Way Forward 

Civil society and NGOs have tried to plug this gap. Smile Foundation, for instance, offers scholarships to students from low income settings through their Mission Education Programme. Under this programme, deserving students, often girls and young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, receive merit-cum-need based support to complete their schooling or even pursue higher and technical education. The Foundation also offers engineering scholarships primarily for underserved girls to pursue four-year engineering degrees in cities like Bengaluru, Jaipur, Mumbai and Pune. 

From a broader social perspective, these scholarships matter not just for individual students but for social mobility. When high-performing students stay in the system, they become role models and their success can cause a ripple effect across communities. 

Looking forward, we need better data infrastructure that not just tracks disbursement of funds but last-mile receipt, student retention as well as outcomes. A real-time dashboard for scholarship delivery, renewal and impact could also potentially flag problem states or districts quickly. Streamlining the process is also vital in order to reduce red tapeism, and to overtly simplify verifications. Most importantly, a strong network between the government and NGOs, along with strong partnerships between NGOs, state education departments and alumni associations can raise awareness and help students with mentorship support. 

In the end, scholarships for low-income, high-achieving students are more than just fiscal instruments. Scholarships can be engines of hope. For too many students, they mean the difference between dreams deferred and dreams realised. But without efficient delivery, systemic responsiveness and a commitment to equity, they risk becoming underutilised promises. If India truly wants to harness true potential, we need to ensure that brilliance is not lost simply because someone lacked the means. Only then can education serve as the bridge it is meant to be: for social justice and national progress.

Let’s start with the facts.

• 244 million children and youth between the ages 6 and 18 years are not in school today and many marginalised children face barriers to learning even when they are in school.
• An estimated 291.2 million children and adolescents globally live with a disability and approximately 95 per cent of these young people live in low- and middle-income countries.
• Nearly half of the total children enrolled in schools in tribal areas (48.2 per cent) drop out even before they complete Class 8, according to the Tribal Development Report, 2022.

Despite advances in education, these facts are stark reminders of ongoing challenges. It’s crucial to maximise a child’s early years by actively supporting their development in every way. Providing early childhood care and education (ECCE) directly boosts various aspects of their growth. India must strengthen its early childhood care and education system to ensure all children and youth: from poor households, rural and remote communities, persons with disabilities, and ethnic and linguistic minorities, to other marginalised or vulnerable groups, can access early childhood care and education.

The Foundation for Future Success: Inclusive Early Childhood Care

Countries that make early childhood development a priority have seen real long-term results. The West’s advantage in education and the economy is largely the result of years of investing in its youngest children. India is now recognising this and has begun moving towards improved Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) systems, understanding that support provided at a young age greatly influences a child’s future learning and employment outcomes. 

Where the System Falls Short

Inclusion is complex, as it means catering to every child and not just those who are easy to serve. Mainstream systems frequently overlook inclusion. Many early education settings still struggle with shortages of qualified teachers, engaging resources, proper facilities and inclusive approaches. Children’s ability to focus and grow is often compromised by poor nutrition. Some parents may not know about nurturing methods or might feel left out of important choices. Irregular funding continues to restrict both the reach and effectiveness of programmes. 

The Reality for Tribal and Indigenous Children

Traditional schooling often fails tribal children. Factors like distance, unsuitable language of instruction, cultural disconnect and financial pressures push many out of education. When lessons feel irrelevant or alienating, children disconnect. 

Alternative models that respect culture and context have begun to change this narrative. Eklavya Model Residential Schools provide safe environments where tribal culture works alongside mainstream academics. Schools like Vidya Vanam in Tamil Nadu use bilingual, activity-based approaches, easing transitions without erasing identity. Community-led initiatives integrate traditional knowledge, forest conservation, herbal practices and vocational skills, offering learning that feels meaningful and empowering. 

More to Inclusive Early Childhood Care

Children with disabilities often face classrooms that are not equipped for their needs, along with staff who lack adequate training to support them, and, to make matters worse, stigma from their peers. Similarly, children from minority backgrounds or those who frequently relocate often struggle with language barriers and prejudice. Additionally, young girls may be burdened with household chores, forced into early marriage or left to worry about their personal safety. Families living in poverty or with low incomes are often preoccupied with meeting basic needs and may find it difficult to access quality education.

What we need to do is ensure that early childhood care and education can reach everyone – that means having flexible learning plans that consider different abilities, and making sure the teachers are properly trained to handle whatever unique challenges might come up. We also need classrooms that are accessible to everyone and learning plans that fit in with the child’s cultural background or learning capacity. Moreover, family support systems are a must.

Skill Building Early On

Early childhood education needs to focus on giving children the skills they’ll need to thrive in the world as it is now. Learning that’s about developing real-world skills helps give kids the confidence to take on tough problems and figure out solutions for themselves. And we can learn a thing or two from some of the tribal education models that teach skills like weaving, farming, pottery, carpentry and digital literacy. These demonstrate that traditional knowledge works hand in hand with modern ways.

What Truly Inclusive ECCE Can Deliver

• A much stronger foundation for children’s learning and thinking.

• Children who are better equipped to handle life’s challenges.

• Improved overall social, emotional and physical health, which is one of the most valuable outcomes.

• Students who perform better academically and attain higher qualifications.

• A significant reduction in the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged.

• Stronger, safer and more connected communities.

• A more productive and thriving national economy.

India has shown its commitment to Inclusive Early Childhood Care for children and youth with disabilities through numerous national policies and initiatives since 1974. To ensure that India’s ECCE becomes genuinely inclusive and successful, it must draw lessons from global and regional programmes and foster close collaboration with all stakeholders for effective implementation and outcomes. Let’s not leave any child behind. Let every child walk into school ready to learn, feeling good about themselves and being in a good frame of mind.

Smile Foundation’s Mission Education (ME) programme brings extensive benefits that extend to individuals, communities, and societies. By prioritising the well-being and development of young children, we lay the groundwork for a brighter future characterised by enhanced human capital, reduced inequalities and sustainable growth.