Colette Chabbott Adjunct Faculty George Washington University Sheldon Shaeffer

1. A Global Perspective on Early Learning and Development: Promoting a Global Learning Agenda Through Early Childhood Care and DevelopmentOn Behalf of the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development Colette Chabbott Adjunct Faculty George Washington University Sheldon Shaeffer Chair, Executive Board, Consultative Group on ECCD

2. provocations • Greater and more equitable access to good quality ECD programmes leads to more equal outcomes for children – e.g., lower child mortality, higher school readiness, higher literacy. So why do so many governments (and development agencies) ignore this fact and pay little attention to early childhood? • Why do the young children who need ECD programmes the most participate in them the least? • girls • the poor • linguistic/ethnic minorities • those with disabilities and delays • those living in remote areas

3. Provocations • Why do many ministries of education and schools pay so little attention to the early grades? • Who usually teaches in Grade 1? • Which grade has the highest pupil-teacher ratio? The lowest? Why? • Which grade has the least effective learning time per week? The most? • What language is used for teaching in Grade 1 – a language most of the learners cannot understand? • Why do so many children fail to learn? Who is to blame for failure – the family and the child or the system and school?

4. Recent Assessment Findings It should therefore be no surprise (but it often is!) that in recent assessments of children’s learning in Grades 1-4:  • Many children are learning little, no matter how many times they repeat a grade. • Many children—in some places the majority—are completing primary school without the most basic literacy and numeracy skills. EXAMPLES:  EdWatch in Bangladesh, EGRA, Pratham/ASER in India, Molteno/Uwezo in Africa, etc. Thus, debate around an “early learning” goal in the post-2015 agenda….

5. Early Literacy: Short-Lived Concern or anOpportunity for the Global Learning Agenda? Caution: the need to be wary of the recent excitement around literacy and numeracy in early primary school • Such government concern is often short-lived and does not pay enough attention to children’s holistic development. • This could lead to more emphasis on early primary grades to the further neglect of ECD.  But this interest in early literacy could be an opportunity for early childhood development to move into a prominent place in a global learning agenda. 

6. “Holistic” development and learning Holistic development – a comprehensive, multi-sectoral approach to early childhood development which leads to improved outcomes for children by ensuring that they are: • physically healthy • mentally alert • emotionally sound • socially competent • ready to learn • ….and morally and spiritually developed….

7. “Inclusive” education and learning Inclusive education – ECD and education systems and schools which lead to more equitable outcomes for children by: • removing all barriers to getting children into ECD services and schools (e.g., barriers of gender, location, disability, language/ethnicity, poverty, etc.) • focusing on initial enrolment, regular attendance, completion, and long-term success • requiring (1) an analysis of what causes exclusion and (2) proactive searching for, and targeted support to, those excluded

8. Early childhood: What is it? Early childhood – the period from 0-8 years of age (and even earlier). Dramatic development and learning occur – and must be enhanced – throughout this period. • 0-3 – through attention to parenting programmes, health, nutrition, cognitive stimulation, and the early identification and remediation of developmental delays and disabilities • 4-5/6 – through participation in non-formal, child-centred ECD/pre-school programmes with a focus on language development and pre-/emergent literacy skills • 6/7-8 – through enrolment in good quality primary schools able to ensure mastery of early literacy, numeracy, and essential behavioural outcomes (e.g., self-reliance, self-regulation)

9. Early Learning challenges (1) • Children must be “ready” for schools, but many have poor health and nutrition, haven’t attended ECD programmes and pre-schools, and/or are “first-generation” learners. • Schools must be “ready” for children, but many are not prepared to teach more children or children with more diverse abilities and characteristics. • The transition from the home/pre-school to the primary school is often not easy. Their curricula, learning environments, and pedagogy are usually neither developmentally continuous nor “seamless”.

10. Early Learning challenges (2) • Traditional curricula, crowded classes, and ineffective teaching don’t give learners enough “quality” time-on-task to gain basic oral language, literacy, and numeracy skills. The result: high repetition, failure, and dropout. • Young children are often taught in a language they don’t understand – rather than in their mother tongue. • A simplistic focus on early reading often does not address underlying language and socio-emotional deficits and can lead to neglect of children’s behavioural and social-emotional outcomes. • Of those who finish primary school, many fail to gain basic literacy and numeracy skills – mostly in countries farthest from achieving EFA.

11. Why “Early Learning”? But, in the last 5-7 years, there has been a new resurgence of interest in “early learning”: • Research from health, nutrition, and neuroscience shows that poor ECD has a negative impact on learning outcomes. • New kinds of assessments (“smaller, quicker, cheaper”) in the early grades (rather than at the end), using rapid, oral, performance-based measures, show low achievement and wide gaps in reading ability. • Low-cost interventions to address these gaps are now being successfully piloted in many countries (e.g., Cambodia). • The result: early reading is now part of the strategies of many major donors to education - The World Bank, the Global Partnership for Education, USAID, AusAID, DfID, etc. (though some of these, strangely, have little interest in ECD).

12. how “Early Learning”? (1) • Build demand by making school readiness and learning gaps visible to the public through simple assessments and mass communications • Expand parent education and ECD programmes/pre-schools -- including a focus on pre-/emergent literacy and numeracy skills -- to help get children “ready” for school • Foster new forms of effective ECD delivery, making sure language development (preferably in mother tongue) is a major focus

13. how “Early Learning”? (2) • Facilitate the smooth, developmentally appropriate transition of learners from the home/preschool to primary school. “Non-formalise” the primary school; don’t “formalise” or “schoolify” the pre-primary school. • Place more resources in the early grades (better teachers, smaller classes, longer hours) • Be inclusive, proactively looking for and serving excluded groups • Identify learners at risk of failure and provide them early, additional remedial support • Don’t only measure averages – focus on the “below average”

14. Any Learning AGENDA needs ecd… ECD is essential for any post-2015 global education goalabout early learning such as early grade reading: • ECD programs can provide many resources necessary to promote cognitive development (e.g., nutrition supplements, preventive health, hygiene education, etc.) • Some of the continuum of literacy skills can be gained through ECD programmes. • Good ECD can be cheaper and more effective in teaching reading and promoting early learning than remedial work in the early grades. • Three years of school are not enough for many first-generation learners to become fluent readers.

15. Ideal LEARNING goals Any goals/targets/indicators for early learning should be: • easy to understand and advocate • flexible, based on country starting points • measurable, based on learner performance (not national written examinations or international assessments) • able to discriminate very low levels of learning • able to be assessed through household or school-based surveys • motivating to the general public and policy-makers

16. ECD IN PROmotingLEARNING goals Targets with ECD at the core of learning could include: • improved child health and nutrition • increased participation in home- and/or centre-based ECD programmes from 0-3 years • increased participation in ECD intervention programmes for children with delays/disabilities • increased GER/NER in pre-schools • increased school readiness, measured before and at school entry, in order to capture the effects of ECD • an increase in the percentage of children in Grade 2/3 able to read with fluency and comprehension • outcomes such as independence and self-regulation

17. And finally – equity! • Any quality education system beyond 2015 requires a greater focus on equity – by urban-rural location, sex, ethnicity and language, socio-economic quintile, and ability/disability. • EFA targets/MDGs can no longer only raise national aggregates but must also reduce existing disparities (in ECD participation, NER, literacy rates, gender parity, teacher qualifications, and, ultimately, student achievement).

18. And finally – equity! A quality education system beyond 2015 must, for example: • nationally – increase by X% the pre-school GER (or the Grade 3 literacy rate) • inclusively – decrease by X% the gap between the pre-school GER (or the Grade 3 literacy rate) of: • girls and boys • urban and rural areas • the highest and lowest performing districts • the upper and the lower quintiles of the population

19. Global Goals:filling the empty cells