Cost, Quality & Outcomes in Early Childhood Education

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Substantial evidence has demonstrated that early childhood education (ECE) has the potential to lead to positive changes in children’s learning and development, but only if quality is sufficiently high. As countries invest more in early childhood education, questions arise on the quality of services offered, the cost of those services, and the resulting impact on child development. Local evidence becomes increasingly more important given the strong influence of context on early childhood development. Research on cost, quality, and outcomes in early childhood education plays an important role in influencing decisions on policy and programmatic investments.

With insights from three distinct contexts, this panel will explore recent analyses of quality, cost, and outcomes in early childhood education using tools developed through the Measuring Early Learning Quality & Outcomes project. Results from Brazil demonstrate that quality measurement conforms to expected constructs across contexts, but also emphasizes the sometimes inconsistent relations that emerge between expected constructs of quality and child development. Results from the Gambia address the importance of examining the costs and outcomes associated with multiple types of early childhood education, and the associations between structural aspects of early childhood education – such as teacher characteristics – and observed quality. The final presentation will focus on the relative strengths of public vs. private provision in one sub-Saharan African country. We will present evidence on the cost of different types of ECE and associations between cost and quality.

Taken together, these papers will provide new insights into costs, quality, and outcomes of early childhood education in three settings.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Diane Coury, IIEP UNESCO

Individual Presentations

• Public and private provision of early childhood education in one sub-Saharan African country: Comparisons of cost, quality, and outcomes - Abbie Raikes, University of Nebraska

• Cost-effectiveness of Pre-Primary Models in the Gambia - Oswald Koussihouede, IIEP-UNESCO Dakar; Diane Coury, IIEP UNESCO

• What is happening in the classroom? The key role of ECE teachers in improving children’s future in the Gambia. - Diana Estefania Ortiz Parra, SciencesPo - IIEP-UNESCO

• Measure of Early Learning Environment (MELE) in Brazil: Validation and Links to Child - Sophie Barnes, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Dana McCoy, Harvard Graduate School of Education