Taking stock of ten years of IDELA: achievements, learned lessons and opportunities ahead

• In Event: Leveraging the potential of data to advance early learning and development: celebrating a decade of IDELA and unfolding future prospects

Proposal

The International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) was launched by Save the Children in 2014 as a global, open-source tool to measure Early Childhood Development (ECD) outcomes at the population level. It is a rigorous assessment of literacy, numeracy, social-emotional and motor skills among children of pre-primary school ages 3 to 6.

Over the years, the IDELA tool has evolved from being a measurement tool of ECD status, to becoming a comprehensive Monitoring and Evaluation toolkit that allows measuring impact-, outcome- and output-level indicators. A second tool, the IDELA Caregiver/Home questionnaire, was added to collect caregiver-reported information on the quality of the ECD home environment. More recently, the IDELA Classroom Environment tool was added to the toolkit, to capture key aspects of the learning environment that are associated with high-quality Early Childhood Education. The data collected by the three IDELA tools, and the resulting indicators, can be embedded in different layers of the Theory of Change for ECD and ECE interventions to provide comprehensive programmatic insights on both the outcomes and the determinants of early learning and development.

To help bridge the gap between research and practice and to provide actionable and accessible evidence and guidance to the IDELA Community of Practice and other stakeholders, other resources have been added to the IDELA toolkit. These recent resources include the IDELA Data-driven Decision-Making Guide and the IDELA Data Explorer, an interactive dashboard that provides visualizations for IDELA results from more than 100 data sources from projects around the globe.

To date, the IDELA toolkit has been used in more than 90 countries and translated into more than 60 languages and local dialects. It has been adopted by more than 140 partner organizations, from national governments, international organizations and NGOs to academic partners and grassroots associations. Thanks to these efforts, Save the Children currently hosts the world’s largest repository of school readiness data, and curates one of the largest knowledge platforms working towards reducing learning inequities worldwide and achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4.

This presentation takes stock of the lessons learned during the ten years since the launch of IDELA, showcasing the global reach of the tool and updated evidence on ECD status and determinants based on data from more than 100 studies. It will highlight challenges and opportunities for global measurement of ECD and stimulate a discussion on the methodological innovations that are most needed to increase IDELA’s scope and outreach and to enhance partner’s capabilities to collect more and better evidence for the most vulnerable children.

Authors

• Seble Mezmur, Save the Children

• Filipa de Castro, Save the Children

• Clara Pava, Save the Children