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Session Submission Summary

Every child “counts”: Early numeracy acquisition in the Global South

Wed, April 28, 1:45 to 3:15pm PDT (1:45 to 3:15pm PDT), Zoom Room, 118

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Early childhood, the period from birth to eight years of age, is a period of rapid development of the brain and the years in which the foundations of lifelong development of the child are rooted. A large body of worldwide research affirms that exposure to enabling environments, age and developmentally appropriate inputs during these early years (which also encompass pre-primary as well early primary grades) are critical to ensuring that children have a firm foundation on which to build, both in school and in life. Research shows that what children learn in their first few years of life as well as how they learn it can have long-lasting effects on their future.

However, evidence also points to the fact that development and learning gaps among children begin to emerge as early as age 3-4 (Tayler, Cloney & Niklas 2015), and continue to manifest once children enter school. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, around 260 million children, adolescents and youth were out of school while among those who were enrolled in school, large proportions were not acquiring even foundational reading and numeracy skills (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the schooling of approximately 1.6 billion learners in 188 countries, about 91% of children enrolled in school (UNESCO, 2020). These school closures and other disruptions due to COVID-19 will exacerbate the equity gaps in education leading to delayed learning, learning loss, increased dropouts and higher inequality.

This situation is likely to push back even the limited progress that countries have made towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the deadline for which is now just a decade away. Two SDG indicators that address young children’s development in the early years are of interest to this panel:
● SDG 4.2.1 – which measures the proportion of children aged 24-59 months who are developmentally on track in health, learning and psychosocial well-being, by sex; and
● SDG 4.1.1(a) – which measures the proportion of children in Grade 2 or 3 achieving at least a minimum proficiency level in (i) reading and (ii) mathematics, by sex.

These indicators are closely related, yet in most contexts there are persistent silos between pre-primary years and early primary grades in discussions, policy, and practice.

This panel spotlights the early years, focusing specifically on young children’s numeracy development in pre-primary and early primary grades. There are at least two reasons for this. First, evidence from several Global South countries suggests that children’s acquisition of early numeracy concepts is often significantly poorer than their early language development (PAL Network, 2017). Second, given the structural differences across languages, research findings with respect to numeracy acquisition may be more relevant to a variety of country contexts. The panel explores three related aspects of early numeracy acquisition in pre-primary and early primary grades, moving from policy and curriculum expectations to young children’s cognitive and pre-numeracy skills, to finally examine children’s early numeracy abilities towards the end of the early years stage.

The first paper presents findings from the analyses of policy frameworks and curricular materials of early numeracy in pre-primary and early primary grades from three states in India. In particular, the paper explores whether the early numeracy and math textbooks for young children meet the pedagogical and curricular norms specified by policy; the extent to which there is upward continuity in learning expectations as well as curricular materials; the topics covered along with the ways in which these are taught; and the similarities and differences in these materials across the states. The paper also examines linkages between books in pre-primary and early primary grades and in doing so, highlights gaps and shares recommendations for how the teaching and learning of numeracy can be more effectively structured for the early years.

The second paper highlights evidence from the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2019 ‘Early Years’, a large-scale citizen-led assessment (CLA) of young children’s abilities in cognitive, early language and numeracy and social and emotional domains. ASER 2019 was conducted in 26 districts across India with a sample of approximately 37,000 children aged 4-8. The paper presents findings on children’s performance in two domains: cognitive and early numeracy skills. It elaborates that while young children’s performance across both these domains improves with age, there are strong correlations between performance in cognitive and early numeracy tasks among all children. These analyses provide a compelling argument for focussing on helping children develop critical abilities such logical thinking and problem solving at an early age so as to strengthen and reinforce their numeracy learning in the later years.

The third paper presents data from the International Common Assessment of Numeracy (ICAN), a large-scale assessment implemented in one district each of 13 countries across Africa, the Americas and Asia in 2019. ICAN adapts several features of existing ASER-like CLAs: for example, it is household based to include all children, those enrolled in government and non-government schools as well as out-of-school children. Crucially, data from the ICAN survey shows that a large proportion of children in grades 2 and 3 are not able to do numeracy tasks aligned to the minimum proficiency level descriptor for SDG 4.1.1 (a), thus emphasizing the need for urgent and targeted interventions beginning earlier in the learning cycle of young children.

Overall, the panel aims to raise important questions around assumptions regarding children’s numeracy acquisition in the early years. Not only will this panel share evidence from large-scale assessments, but it will locate these discussions within an equity framework, bringing to light the larger policy context of how the teaching and learning of numeracy is currently organized, and importantly reflect on how it can be organized better.

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