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Abstract
The present study is an attempt to explore the pre-school educational status of an urban slum of Delhi named "lohar Basti". Lohar Basti is a small slum situated under a fly over in Mansarovar park of New Delhi. The main tools used in the study were questionnaire, interview schedule and focus group discussions. In the study mainly parents living in the particular slum, aaganwadi teachers working in aaganwadi of that slum, officials of NGOs working in the slum were interviewed. Questionnaire was also being used to collect the basic profile of the people living in the slums. The paper showed the educational facilities like ICDS centres, aaganwadis, day care centres etc. available for pre-school children in the slum, types of centres in which children were enrolled, facilities they are getting from the centres, perception of parents who are sending their children to any of the pre-education centres as well those who are not sending their children to any of the pre-education centres regarding education provided by the pre-education centres and reasons for sending and not sending their children to particular education centre. Through the present study the researcher has tried to throw light on the situation of slums located in a high tech city in terms of "Early Childhood Care and Education". From the field based data it was found that pre-school education level of Lohar Basti is much below the desired level.
Introduction
Section II of Article 45 pertains to Early Childhood Care and Education states : "with a view to prepare children above the age of three years for elementary education and to provide ECCE for all children until they complete the age of 6 years, the appropriate government may take necessary arrangements for providing free pre primary education for such children....". ICDS one of the eight flagship programme of Government of India is one of the world's unique and largest outreach programme covers 1.18 million aaganwadis. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan another flagship programme of Government of India covers 73860 ECCE centres. Private schools a shinning line in the cloud of Indian Education system also provides pre-primary education and today 254179 schools have pre primary wing (Sheeranjan & Awathi 2010).
With the expansion of care and development of child in early...