230 | Quality Early Learning
SPOTLIGHT
ECE Management: Some Lessons from the Field With the support of the World Bank’s Early Years Fellows,a information was collected in 12 countries using a brief questionnaire to gain an understanding of policies around and support to early childhood education (ECE) management (see annex 5A). The countries were Angola, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, the Arab Republic of Egypt, El Salvador, Jordan, Mali, Morocco, North Macedonia, Pakistan, and Tunisia. From responses to the short questionnaire, along with desk reviews, the following conclusions about the state of policies and support for ECE can be drawn: • Private ECE centers tend to have higher autonomy. One of the most important differences is the degree of management autonomy in private centers. Most private kindergartens are not attached to a private primary school and have a principal that is exclusively focused on ECE in comparison with the public systems. • Clear policies for ECE management are lacking. There is no clear policy regarding leadership in ECE centers. There are countries where ECE centers typically have a leader who is the managerial or administrative representative; this situation applies to both public and private providers (Angola, Brazil, El Salvador, North Macedonia, Mali, Tunisia). In other cases, public ECE centers (called kindergarten classrooms) are attached to primary schools. The primary school head is responsible for the school as a whole unit,
