Md Tariqul Islam¹, Farhana Rashid², Sheikh Abir Hossain^1,

All over the world, day care center is one of the recognized institutional settings to ensure early childhood care and development. In Bangladesh day care centers serve as shelter for children while parents engage in their professional responsibilities. In this study, a day care center in Bangladesh was investigated to find out the initiatives implemented to address the issues of early childhood development and parents’ perception in this regard. Mixed methods approach was followed for collecting and analyzing data. Required data was collected from the parents of the enrolled children and a teacher of the early childhood development center. Various documents and websites of the day care center, government policies and frameworks were also analyzed to see the real practice and its relationship with the policy guidelines. The findings of the study revealed that the purposes of the parents for enrolling their children in the day care center were fulfilled in a significant level. Parents also expressed their satisfaction about the services in early childhood development through physical, social, emotional, cognitive development and school preparation of the day care center as well. Besides, some parents suggested increasing the service hours in a day so that they can perform their other duties more comfortably. In addition, few parents want to see religious education in the very early stage of their children.

early childhood, education, care and development, day care, bangladesh