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Improving measures of participation in early childhood education

Wed, March 8, 8:00 to 9:30am, Sheraton Atlanta, Floor: 1, Georgia 5 (South Tower)

Proposal

Ranging from crèches for the very young to formal pre-schools, early childhood education (ECE) programmes can help ensure a child’s well-being through the interaction and play that children need for cognitive development, and through the provision of basic health care and nutrition which help to maintain children as developmentally “on-track.” These programs also prepare children for primary school, contributing to higher enrolment and completion rates. And yet, disparities in access to programmes persist, leaving behind the most disadvantaged children. In some countries, the gap between government targets and social realities is significant.
The role of ECE in child development has attracted growing policy interest in improving opportunities for early childhood development, learning and education. Its prominence in the agenda for Sustainable Development (Target 4.2: by 2030 ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education) has led to greater attention to existing measurement tools, their advantages, limitations and new efforts and alternative measures that could contribute to more relevant, reliable and feasible indicators for benchmarking early childhood learning opportunities and their distribution among the population.
This paper would examine the current status of indicators used to measure participation in early childhood education, defined according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED2011) as education programmes designed to support early development in preparation for participation in school and society for children below the age of 3 (ISCED 0.1); and education programmes designed to support early development in preparation for participation in school and society for children from age 3 to the start of primary education (ISCED 0.2).
The first part of the paper describes the types of system-level data collected on early childhood education which are cross-nationally comparable, including the structure of education systems; the methods which are used to report data and to calculate indicators, and the limitations of existing indicators, especially given the emerging demands of policymakers, advocates and other data users.
The second part of the paper would address the specific barriers to better reporting. It would look at issues from the supply-side: for example, institutional issues where responsibility for early childhood development involves different government actors (e.g., health, social welfare and education); the extent of private provision which are not captured by national information systems; as well as the demand-side: who are the users of these data and what are their needs?
The final part of the paper would look at what would be needed to improve existing indicators and the implementation of such indicators as part of national information systems.

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