Jammu August 4: Director School Education Jammu Ashok Sharma Pitched for strong leadership among Education Officers, Particularly CEOs ZEOs and HOIs, for effective implementation of early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) as envisioned in National Education Policy 2020. He was speaking after inaugurating a one-day ECCE leadership workshop with Education Functionaries organised in Collaboration with the Directorate of Samagra Shiksha J&K, Directorate of School Education Jammu by The National Development J&K Jammu in partnership with UNICEF INDIA at the Institution of Engineers Channi Jammu. Around 60 education officers from the School Education department and SCERT J&K Participated. Sh. Ajeet Sharma Coordinator quality Samagra, Sh. N P Singh, Head ECCE SCERT; Sayeed Fayaz, Assistant Coordinator Quality Samagra, Ms. Jaswinder Kour, Coordinator Pre-primary; Dr. Sarita Sharma. Assistant Coordinator Pre-Primary and Mr Sunny Kumar Programme Manager National Development Foundation, acted as resource persons and interacted with the participants and also addressed their queries.

Sh. Jagdeep Padha AO Samagra In his address apprised about various initiatives of Samagra Shiksha with a special focus on ECCE. He also highlighted the Outcomes of Three years of NEP. CEO Jammu Mr Suraj Singh Rathore lauded the role of the National Development Foundation and called upon the participants to share the learnings of this workshop with fellow Colleagues and implement in their schools.

Mr Rajiv Kumar Khajuria, President National Development Foundation, termed Early Childhood care and education as the basic Right of Children, without which the Right to free and compulsory Education Cannot be effectively realised. He said that coming up with the NEP 2020 Govt of India has clarified ECCE as the fundamental right of Indian Children.

Director Education Ashok Sharma, in his address while pitching for the ECCE leadership among education officers, called upon for the coordinated efforts and joint working of Aanganwari centres and kindergartens of the school education department. He informed that Govt. is opening 100 Kindergartens in each district this year. Many are already working and delivering good results, added the director. He called upon the teaching community to dedicatedly work to make govt schools premier institutions of learning. He said that those who are doing good work and teaching will be rewarded, but those whose results are not good and rare not taking their work seriously will be dealt with strongly.He appreciated the role of the National development foundation in organising the children and youth for National character building. He assured full support of the School Education department for the positive work NDF is doing in the best interest of the Children.