Harnessing the power of global data to support young children's learning and development: Analyses, dissemination and implementation

The 2017 Lancet Series, Advancing Early Childhood Development: From Science to Scale, estimated that 43% of children under 5 years in LMICs (250m children), were at risk of not reaching their potential because they had stunted linear growth or lived in extreme poverty. The proportion of children at risk increases appreciably when additional risk factors are considered, especially low maternal schooling and child maltreatment. Living in poor and unstimulating conditions affects young children's learning and development. Children exposed to poverty and adversity explore and learn less than children not exposed to these stresses; they learn less at school and achieve fewer school grades; earn less as adults; have more social problems, and poorer physical and mental health. We will study barriers and accelerators to learning in LMIC ECE programmes, at home and in communities, as well as associations between early learning and indicators of child development and school performance. We will estimate their longer-term effects on education and earnings in adulthood. We will use descriptive and statistical analyses of secondary data collected through representative country surveys and research studies. As an established group of multi-disciplinary and multi-country experts and collaborators, we build on prior success in sourcing and analysing data from 91 LMICs by including early education and expanding to 137 countries. Global data, presented along the continuum of the early years, breaks down the false dichotomy between ECD and ECE, between care and education, and between learning at home and in formal programmes, and supports multi-sectoral actions along different stages of the life-course. We will expand our global analyses of threats to ECD by examining gender, location and wealth, services and family supports for young children, and policies that create facilitating environments for families and children. We will, for the first time, link indicators of the structural quality of ECE (eg teacher-child ratios) to contexts and child outcomes in LMICs. Process quality (eg teacher- and caregiver-child interactions), on which there is as yet no global data, will be studied through case studies in 5 countries, one in each of five regions of the world. We will source data on government, development assistance and household expenditures on pre-primary education; extract further country micro-data on contexts in which young children develop and learn; update nationally representative data on young children, services and policies to the most recent survey dates available, and develop new composite indicators of barriers and accelerators of young children's learning and development. Through partnerships with regional networks of ECD-ECE government and stakeholder teams, the project will help to build research capacity in ECD-ECE, and increase the use of data for decision-making, action and monitoring in 20 countries. We will use the results to provide evidence-based support to engage international human rights law, especially the right to education and the rights of the child, in advancing progress towards achieving the SDG goals of universal access by 2030. This research will address the gap in the evidence base for a unified approach to ECD and ECE. The findings will support the development of the right to education by providing a holistic approach to guide early development and educational interventions. It will demonstrate the strength of interdisciplinary work in cross-fertilizing data analysis and legal research in building strong foundations for translation into policy and regulatory change. Given the evidence on the critical roles of ECD-ECE on learning and wellbeing in the short, medium and longer term, the project has important implications for development and welfare in countries on the DAC list. This large-scale global approach is critical to support and guide policy and investments.

Data drives action and accountability. The target for SDG 4.2 states that by 2030, all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education. The target has two indicators: 4.2.1- Percentages of children under 5 years of age who are developmentally on track in health, learning, and psychosocial well-being (disaggregated by: sex, location, wealth) and 4.2.2: Participation rates in organized learning one year before the official primary school entry age. This project aims to fill important data gaps in ECD and ECE and address questions of importance to policy makers, funders and key stakeholders. Apart from quite poorly defined indicators in MICS and DHS (eg "Has the child ever attended any early childhood education programme?", "Does (name) attend any organized learning or early childhood education programme, such as a private or government facility, including kindergarten or community child care?"), there is little other country-comparable global data on pre-primary education in LMICs. In addition, the early childhood data that is available, is lodged in disparate data sets, sometimes difficult to understand, and requiring disaggregation by age, gender, urban-rural location and socioeconomic conditions to usefully guide policy, action and accountability at the country level. We propose to assemble and analyse available data, using our combined expertise to contribute to providing a more complete picture. Some gaps can only be filled by new data, and at conclusion of the project, we will be in a position to make strong recommendations for collection of new standardised data through regular representative household surveys. The information will be of practical benefit for countries to address early childhood development and learning with onward benefits for education and economic activity. The project thus aims to benefit LMICs by making country-comparable data available for 137 countries. The precedent for this approach is the Countdown initiative in health, which regularly updated data on maternal and child mortality throughout the MDG era and which, for the purpose of achieving the SDGs, has expanded its mandate to include ECD. The list of 137 countries is given in another section of the proposal and includes 21 countries identified as conflict-affected in the Uppsala University Conflict Database. In addition to making data available for most LMICs, the project will work interactively with 20 countries chosen strategically across geographies where the burden of risk of sub-optimal early childhood development is high and progress in pre-primary policy and access is urgently needed, and where commitment towards action is tangible. These countries will be chosen, in consultation with regional and country networks after the start of the project, once the data necessary to shortlist countries is available. Country teams, including senior policy makers and influencers, such as ministries of education, health, social and child protection, parliamentarians, implementing and funding partners, representatives from civil society, the private sector and academic institutions engaged with children's issues, will attend 3-day workshops convened by UNICEF and WHO in collaboration with UNESCO and the World Bank. At these workshops, and follow-up activities, country teams will be assisted to understand the sources and coding of data, what the data indicates about the situation of young children and pre-primary education in their country, how the data points to the most appropriate priorities for action, and how to use the data to monitor action and drive accountability. Consultations on the aims of the project and engagement with regional and country networks has already begun, as indicated by letters of support from the Arab, Asia-Pacific and Eastern European regions, as well as from UNICEF, WHO and UNESCO.