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Jumpstarting primary school: Approaches to ECE for near-1st graders with no prior access

Wed, March 13, 4:45 to 6:15pm, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Third Level, Stanford

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

High-quality early childhood education (ECE) supports children’s future learning, and lifelong economic and socioemotional well-being (e.g. Holla et al., 2021; Muroga et al., 2020). Yet around half of 3-6 year-olds, and 80% of those in under-resourced and crisis-affected contexts, have no access to ECE (Muroga et al., 2020). Reasons for this include a lack of resources, inability to get to in-person preschools, and difficulty in serving highly mobile populations. Those without access include both younger children and those very near to beginning primary school who, as such, no longer have time to enroll in full year ECE programming.

In order to reach sustainable development goal 4.2 - high quality ECE for all - we need flexible, adaptable approaches to what ECE is and how it is provided. We need approaches that can operate at low cost and which are implementable in or adaptable to contexts: without in-person options; with families unlikely to stay in the same location for the duration of an average school year; and, with children who have not had any ECE access but are about to start primary school.

In this panel, we explore three such approaches: two in-person, one school-based, and one fully remote. All three programs take place over the course of three months or less and are thus well suited to providing ECE for children nearing the beginning of 1st grade.

First, we discuss a school-based, school-readiness program that takes place within 1st grade classrooms in the month prior to the beginning of first grade. This program has run in Iraq, Jordan, and Northeast Syria. It has implications for developing contextualized, scalable solutions for expanding ECE access, as well as for teacher training and approaches to teaching of first grade teachers in addition to any direct impact on participating children. This program has not yet been casually evaluated and will be discussed with an eye toward implications both for future programming and future research.

Second, we will present information on the impacts of a low-cost accelerated ECE model. We will discuss the impacts of this model based on a set of studies from Laos, Mozambique, Côte d’Ivoire, Cambodia, and Tanzania. We will also discuss how different approaches and contextual factors in these countries affected implementation and outcomes.

Third, we will present a fully remote ECE model for areas designed for ares where in-person programming is not feasible. We will discuss both the impact evaluation of this program in Lebanon, where it was created, and a pilot program of it conducted during the summer before 1st grade in Iraq.

We will close with a discussion of overarching implications for ECE access and increased school readiness as suggested by these models, all of which greatly increase the viability of achieving SDG 4.2.

In many settings (e.g., conflict-affected, highly rural), it is often not possible to quickly set up in-person classrooms. In some cases, due to high mobility, it is also not feasible to focus on 8-9 month long programming. Brief ECE programs may also be of particular interest to government or other implementing bodies interested in providing ECE at scale but restricted by budgetary constraints. Understanding the value and contributions of short-term ECE programs (both in person and remote) can provide a roadmap to alternative services when more traditional models are not feasible.

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