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A limited research has so far been carried out in it in Bangladesh on Early Childhood Development (ECD). It is now generally recognized that the first five years of a child’s life has a crucial and cumulative effect on its future development. Although some costly efforts on ECD are found in city areas in Bangladesh, the children of the hardcore poor families are deprived of such facilities. The project under consideration is being carried out in Kajoli, Sripur Police Station under Magura District and is known as Kajoli Early Childhood Development Project. It began with children aged between 3 and 5, all belonging to the hard-core poor families. The basic objective of the research is to develop a replicable and scientific model of preschool for rural poor based on indigenous culture and context. It is expected that at the end of the one-year session the children would be able to graduate successfully to the mainstream national schools. The pre-school activities are based on low-cost teaching aids and no tuition fees required for the children. The parents provide school lunch and teacher support through participatory methods that impose no unbearable burdens on them. Except for the salary of one teacher, the community provides other supports. The school curriculum focuses on physical and mental development, sensory development, social behaviour and personality development, instead of focusing on conventional education. This research is expected to develop a new and effective model for early childhood development of hard-core poor children who are often deprived of mainstream education system due to economic, social and other reasons. The project has already brought significant changes among the children attending the pre-school in physical, behaviour, language development, progress in learning, drawing, introduction with the Bangla letters etc. At the initial days of the pre-schooling, children come to the school with dirty appearances not mainly due to poorness of the family but mainly due to lack of awareness about the benefits of cleanliness. During early days of pre-schooling children frequently took away the toys and educational materials to their homes without permission from the teachers. When they were told about the negative sides, this behaviour of the children changed much towards positive direction. Significant positive improvements also achieved in case of language and numerical development.
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