Singh, RituNautiyal, Himani2019-11-302019-11-302019-09http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810136508The earliest years of a child’s life are critical. These years determine child’s survival and thriving in life, and lay the foundations for her/ his learning and holistic development. Concept of Early Years Education (EYE) refers to a philosophy of providing opportunities and experiences to preschoolers in order to promote their holistic development, as well as arranging and providing services and support systems to communities and families to meet the needs of their young children. In India two types of preschool structures vis. private preschools and public preschools. This study was undertaken with a view to assess the differences existing across private and public preschools in terms of infrastructure and curriculum, child caregiver interaction and age specific development. The study was carried out purposively in two blocks of Distt. Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand namely- Rudrapur and Gadarpur. Firstly, a list of private peschools under the block Rudrapur and Gadarpur was procured by the researcher online. The researcher also used snowball sampling method to locate some of the private preschools which were not available online. In selection of public preschools the researcher procured the list from District Programme Office of the District Udham Singh Nagar. 10 private and 18 public preschools served as the sample for the current study. In which 31 caregivers and 351 preschoolers were from private preschools whereas, 27 caregivers and 291 preschoolers were from public preschools. Mixed methods involving non-participatory observations and survey method was used for data collection. To assess the assumed objectives following tools were used: Early Childhood Education Quality Assessment Scale (CECED, 2011), Child Caregiver Interaction Scale (Carl, 2010) and Ages and Stages Questionnaire (Squires and Bricker, 2009). Non participatory observation method was used to assess infrastructure and curriculum differences existing across private and public preschools using Early Childhood Education Quality Assessment Scale and the same method i.e. non participatory observation was used to assess hild Caregiver Interaction across private and public preschools using Child Caregiver Interaction Scale. To assess age specific developmental differences existing among preschoolers enrolled in private and public preschools the researcher distributed Ages and Stages Questionnaire to the parents of the preschoolers. On comparing the data for infrastructure and curriculum private preschools were significantly higher than public preschools on dimensions of- physical settings, meal time, learning and play aids, classroom management and organisation, personal care, hygiene and habit formation, language and reasoning experiences, fine and gross motor activities, social development, child care worker’s disposition. Furthermore on assessing caregiving across private and preschools it was found that private preschool caregivers were significantly high on all the three domain of the scale which were:- emotional, cognitive/physical and social. On assessing the age specific developmental differences among preschoolers across private and public preschools it was found that private preschoolers were significantly higher than public preschoolers in communication, problem solving and personal social domains. Whereas, public preschoolers were higher than private peschoolers in two domains which were: - fine and gross motor domain. Similar results were found between boys and girls of private and public preschools.ennullThesis