3. Governance and decentralization of pre-primary services in four countries of the Europe and Central Asia region

• In Event: The Equity Initiative: Traveling the Road of Expanding Access to Quality Pre-Primary Education Opportunities: Towards a Competent and Efficient Sub-sector

Proposal

Efficient governance of early childhood education systems is critical to sustaining access to early childhood education (ECE) at scale. The Europe and Central Asia Region (ECA) began the transition from highly centralized, planned economies to market-dominated decentralized ones in response to profound political and economic changes in the 1990s. These changes have led to fiscal and institutional reforms that impact public and social service provision. Despite the assumption that decentralization increases economic efficiencies, there is scarce evidence on its impact on early childhood education (ECE) services.

This session focuses on a qualitative study on the impact of decentralization on the level of autonomy, institutional capacity, and accountability at national, subnational and local levels across six components of ECE systems domains (policy planning, implementation, vertical coordination, horizontal coordination, financing, and quality assurance) in four ECA countries: Moldova (Eastern Europe), Serbia (South Eastern Europe), Azerbaijan (South Caucasus), and Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia). The country sample was used to characterize the ECE policy landscape and assess the challenges and opportunities that political (devolution), administrative (deconcentration), fiscal and market transfers of responsibilities to the subnational and local levels have generated in the context of access, equity and quality goals for ECE. The methodology included content analyses of key ECE policies and documents, key informant interviews, bottleneck analysis, based on a fit-for-purpose conceptual framework adapted from decentralization research in the health sector.

The session will discuss the findings of the cross-country analysis, and provide insights on possible areas for continued and/or enhanced engagement with national, subnational and local governance levels and development partners with the aim of overcoming challenges and capitalizing on policy and operational opportunities of decentralized systems for ECE. Implications for approaches to enhancing quality particularly in contexts of decentralized governance for early childhood education will also be explored.
 

Author

• Liliana A. Ponguta, Yale University