early years

How community-based early childhood programs can impact child development

*An early childhood development center in Indonesia. (Photo: Angela Kinnell)*

250 million children under the age of five in the developing world are failing to reach their full development potential. Faced with this challenge, governments and donors across the globe have turned to early childhood education and development (ECED) services. These are a cost-effective way to overcome the developmental losses associated with growing up in a disadvantaged environment. The services can be delivered in different ways, such as through kindergartens and community-based playgroups.

But how effective are these, in practice?

Committing to the Early Years, the Foundation for Growth

This page in: French

In 2013, I was confronted by the realization of my country’s situation at a parliamentarian workshop organized by UNICEF where I learned about the different forms of malnutrition that we face. There, I discovered that my country, Cameroon, has an overall stunting prevalence of 32% for children under age five. In other words, one in three children under the age of five is affected. I now know of the devastating effects of malnutrition on the health of families, children and adolescents and consequently on the development of our country. As a parliamentarian, I’ve worked to serve my constituency and set up a community health insurance which helps improve the coverage of vulnerable children and young people. These challenges are our daily reality, but I was surprised to see them highlighted by the President of the World Bank in Washington, DC when I traveled there for the World Bank’s Spring Meetings.

Why we should invest in getting more kids to read — and how to do it

Data shows that huge swaths of populations in developing countries are not learning to read. Scaling up early reading interventions will be a first step toward addressing these high illiteracy rates. (Photo: Liang Qiang / World Bank)

It is estimated that more than 250 million school children throughout the world cannot read. This is unfortunate because literacy has enormous benefits – both for the individual and society. Higher literacy rates are associated with healthier populations, less crime, greater economic growth, and higher employment rates. For a person, literacy is a foundational skill required to acquire advanced skills. These, in turn, confer higher wages and more employment across labor markets .

In Africa, changing norms and advocating for investments in the early years

A conversation with Dr. Ibrahima Giroux, Senegal’s Early Years Fellow

Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank — The demand for expertise in the area of early childhood development is increasing in Africa. But this demand is not being met. (Photo: Dominic Chavez/World Bank)

The first few years of a child’s life have proven to be an ideal window of opportunity to break the cycle of poverty. Yet across the world, nearly half of all three to six-year-olds do not have access to pre-primary education.

Chickens don't use toilets: Why managing animal feces helps children grow taller

Those who have tried toilet training a pet dog or cat know that it is a difficult proposition. How about toilet training a flock of 30 chickens?

“Why would I want to?” Because in poor countries, chickens are everywhere, they are pooping wherever they want, and chicken feces is dangerous for young children.

Early childhood as the foundation for tomorrow’s workforce

Also available in: Spanish

Scott Ozanus, guest blogger, is the Deputy Chairman and Chief Operating Officer at KPMG. He is also a member of the ReadyNation CEO Task Force on Early Childhood

Early childhood is key to a productive current workforce as well as nations’ future success. Photo: Arne Hoel / World Bank

Better workers. Better communities. Better lives for our citizens.

Why is a company that employs over 189,000 people around the world, and hires about 40,000 people every year, concerned with early childhood?

It’s because all over the globe, countries and companies face a common challenge: How best to strengthen their economy and workforce, while also taking societal concerns into consideration. Early childhood is key to a productive current workforce as well as nations’ future success.

Building the foundation for better early childhood care and education in Sri Lanka

Playtime of the students of the Nipuna preschool in Welampitiya, Sri Lanka. Credit: Renu Warnasuriya / World Bank

The Little Rose preschool is situated at the base of a fifty-foot high landfill in Colombo’s Kolonnawa Division. Despite being next to one of Sri Lanka’s largest waste sites, the one room preschool is spotless. Inside, 23 children from ages 3 to 5 sit on colorful plastic chairs, dressed immaculately in ‘Little Rose’ uniforms.

Running a preschool in one of Colombo’s biggest slums isn't easy, but head teacher R. A. Shalika Sajeevani exudes positivity. “The children don’t always bring snacks, so once a week, I make lunch for all of them at my home. It’s not a big deal – I cook for my own two sons anyway, I just put in a little extra for them,” she says.

The students are supposed to pay LKR 500 ($3.40) per month as school fees, but most are only occasionally able to do so. In spite of this, Sajeevani ensures that the preschool doors are open to all children in the neighborhood as many parents in this underserved community cannot afford to pay.

She pays her assistant and covers other expenses from the money collected and retains the rest as salary, a meagre amount of LKR 5,000 ($34) a month. Though this is barely enough to survive in Sri Lanka’s fast growing capital, she has come to work everyday for the last ten years.

3. Students of the Sri Sambuddhaloka Preschool sit down to have morning snacks — Students of the Sri Sambuddhaloka Preschool settle down on the floor for their mid-morning snack. With minimal facilities, this school is currently serving 97 toddlers from one of Colombo’s many low income communities. Credit: Renu Warnasuriya / World Bank

Challenges in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE):

In a country with a well-structured free education system covering primary, secondary, and tertiary education, the state has traditionally provided little in terms of preschool education and care. However, evidence and experience has shown that ECCE improves school readiness and learning outcomes, which ultimately translates into better occupational status and earnings and yields much higher rates of return on investment.

According to the recent report, “Laying the Foundation for Early Childhood Education in Sri Lanka: Investing Early, Investing Smartly, and Investing for All”, Sri Lanka’s public spending on education as a percentage of its economy was the lowest in South Asia and its spending on early childhood education (ECE) is significantly lower than the global average.

While the country boasts of a near universal primary school enrollment rate, only about half of its 3 to 5 year-olds are enrolled in preschools which are not primarily covered by the state. Around 60 percent of preschools are run by the private sector and 24 percent by the other organizations and religious groups.

Income and location are found to be among the key determinants of access to ECCE. Children from the richest 20 percent of the population are 17 percent more likely to be enrolled in preschools than children from the poorest 20 percent. Enrollment rates in urban areas is 10 percent higher than enrollment in rural or estate areas. Many centers in the country do not have adequate learning materials and quality teachers, coupled with the lack of standardized curricula and teaching facilities. Many teachers to their credit, have to depend on their own creativity to develop activities and teaching methods.

Helping children survive and thrive: How toilets play a part

While child mortality rates have plummeted worldwide, nearly one-third of all children under 5 in developing countries are stunted. Children who are stunted (having low height-for-age) suffer from a long-term failure to grow, reflecting the cumulative effects of chronic deficits in food intake, poor care practices, and illness. The early years of life, especially the first 1,000 days, are critical; if a child’s growth is stunted during this period, the effects are irreversible and have lifelong and intergenerational consequences on their future human capital and potential to succeed.

For the water and sanitation community the year 2009 marked a turning point in our understanding of the role that Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) has on child stunting. A provocative Lancet article (Humphrey 2009) put forth the hypothesis that a key cause of child stunting is asymptomatic gut infection caused by ingestion of fecal bacteria. Small children living in poor sanitary environments are especially at risk, through frequent mouthing of fingers and objects during exploratory play, playing in areas contaminated with human and animal feces and ingesting contaminated food and water (Ngure et al. 2013). Researchers now estimate that up to 43 percent of stunting may be due to these gut infections, known as environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) (Guerrant et al. 2013).

Just last week estimates were released suggesting that poor sanitation is the second leading cause of child stunting worldwide (Danaei et al. 2016). In a key departure from previous work, the researchers defined risk as the sanitation level of a community, rather than an individual. This is consistent with mounting evidence showing that a community’s coverage of sanitation is more important than any one household’s (Andres et al. 2013). Across different studies, data sets and outcomes the evidence consistently shows that a threshold of around 60–70 percent household usage within a community is needed before the health and nutrition benefits of sanitation begin to accrue. Studies that have focused on an individual’s toilet use as a predictor, rather than a community’s use, may have vastly underestimated the impacts (Hunter and Prüss-Ustün 2016).

As we advance our understanding of the ways in which a poor sanitary environment impacts growth in small children, we can better design water and sanitation interventions to target these pathways. While there is a role for multi-sectoral interventions, which can simultaneously target the underlying determinants of child undernutrition, such as food security, access to health services, and childcare practices — there are ways that the water sector can adapt its own approaches so that they are more nutrition-sensitive, and more impactful on nutrition. Here are four key actions:

Five ways to improve parenting education in Indonesia

A parenting education workshop is underway in Indonesia.

Ed's note: This guest blog is by Heather Biggar Tomlinson (Executive Director, Roshan Learning Center) and Syifa Andina (Chairperson, Foundation for Mother and Child Health)

There is a dynamic and growing energy in Indonesia focusing on parenting education, particularly for low-income families. However, little is known about parenting styles and related outcomes, much less the coverage and effectiveness of various parenting education approaches.

How countries deliver high-quality early learning: Insights through a systems approach

Starting them young and making the early years count. (Trevor Samson/World Bank)

Providing quality early learning to children is one of the most important investments a country can make. Evidence has linked investments in the early years to better outcomes in school, improved work prospects and higher wages in adulthood, and even better health. Inequities in education start in early childhood, with consequences that ripple through later stages in life. We also know that quality counts: poor-quality early learning environments can be unhelpful or even detrimental for a child’s future.

Less well understood, however, is how countries can deliver high-quality early learning services equitably and at scale. How do countries get from a small-scale, well monitored pilot—which is where a lot of our evidence comes from—to a national program, without diluting quality too much or leaving behind the most disadvantaged children? How can countries build a motivated, well-trained workforce that understands and can serve the distinctive developmental needs of children before the primary years? What are effective models to work with private providers?

The Early Learning Partnership (ELP) is embarking on a new research program to generate some answers to these questions. ELP is a multi-donor trust fund at the World Bank which provides analytic and operational support to World Bank teams and client countries who want to invest in early childhood. With support from the UK Department for International Development, we are launching the ELP Systems Research Program, with an initial focus on Ethiopia, Liberia, the Punjab province in Pakistan, and Tanzania.

early years

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