Notes

32 | Quality Early Learning

1. Learning poverty means being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10. This indicator brings together schooling and learning indicators: it begins with the share of children who have not achieved minimum reading proficiency (as measured in schools) and is adjusted by the proportion of children who are out of school (and are assumed not able to read proficiently) (World Bank 2019). 2. For instance, in nearly 40 LMICs, grade 1 enrollment rates are 30 percent greater than the number of grade 1–age children, largely because of repetition in grade 1 (Crouch and Merseth 2017). 3. Other crucial interventions to support human capital development during early childhood include health, nutrition, and protection from stress. 4. ECE includes center-based programs delivered at preschools, kindergartens, nursery schools, and community centers. These programs can be public, private, or community based and can range from one year right before the start of primary school to three years starting at age three. 5. Motivated by the Millennium Development Goals, in the past two decades many countries rapidly expanded enrollment in basic education. However, this expansion came with stagnation or reduction in learning outcomes because systems were not equipped to receive new entrants and ensure quality (World Bank 2018b). 6. In this volume, learning encompasses holistic child development and wellbeing, which are necessary conditions for learning. 7. In its Smart Buys report, the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel, cohosted by the World Bank and the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, endorsed ECE as a Good Buy given that there is good evidence that these interventions are cost-effective (GEEAP 2020). 8. Provision of ECE varies greatly around the world. In countries where ECE is the purview of more than one system, sometimes services are split by children’s age, with the early childhood education and care system providing services for younger children (for example, three-to-four-year-olds), while the year immediately before primary school (five-to-six-year-olds) is provided by the local education system. In other cases, both systems deliver services for children three to six years old in parallel. 9. The literature on ECE typically distinguishes between “structural” and “process” dimensions of quality. Structural quality encompasses quality of physical and other basic elements of the classroom that are easily and objectively quantifiable, such as infrastructure, materials, and play items, as well as standards related to staff-to-child ratios and group size, among others. Structural features can influence process quality and accelerate and support learning.

Process quality relates to children’s everyday experiences and involves the social, emotional, and instructional aspects of children’s classroom experience, including the daily interactions that children have with their teachers,

Overview | 33

peers, and environment (Vandell et al. 2010). Yet these dimensions of quality

ECE are difficult to measure, are less visible to decision-makers, and can be difficult to improve—which may help explain why country strategies to improve the quality of ECE often focus too narrowly on inputs or structural aspects of ECE settings (for example, infrastructure, service standards). 10. Information from the Systems Approach for Better Education Results–Early

Childhood Development (SABER-ECD) database ( https://saber.worldbank.org /index.cfm?indx=8&pd=6&sub=0). 11. Information from SABER-ECD database. 12. These ECE workforce challenges are seen against the backdrop of a severe shortage of ECE teachers worldwide. LMICs are home to 60 percent of the world’s ECE-age children but have only 32 percent of all ECE teachers (UNICEF 2019). To meet the Sustainable Development Goal target of universal ECE coverage by 2030, the world will need 9.3 million new ECE teachers, 90 percent of whom will be needed in LMICs (UNICEF 2019). 13. See annex OA for more details on nonstate ECE provision. 14. Systemwide ECE quality is hard to quantify given limited data on its key outcome: child learning outcomes. Though imperfect, early-grade learning outcome indicators could shed some light on the level of quality of ECE service provision, especially in countries with high ECE coverage. For example, the

Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) measures oral fluency and basic literacy skills among second and third graders. Although scores do not capture the isolated impacts of ECE and may not have been administered in a child’s mother tongue or first language, EGRA indicators such as the ability to read a single word are reflective of the effectiveness of the education system in the early years. For example, in Liberia, where net enrollment in preprimary is 59 percent, more than 30 percent of second graders still cannot read a single word, and in Kenya, where gross enrollment in preprimary is 78 percent, 23 percent of grade 1 students still cannot read a single word. 15. For example, the Perry Preschool Program’s cost was approximately

US$13,780 per child per school year (in 2017 dollars). 16. See chapter 3 for a detailed discussion and examples of the strategies highlighted here. 17. Curricula constitute the basis of what and how young children are taught, and pedagogy is the basis for how educators organize and facilitate the educational experience in ECE classrooms. Effective ECE curricula are culturally informed and evidence based and foster emergent literacy and early mathematics skills, along with physical and socioemotional development, in a language that children understand (see box O.2). For example, counting blocks is a more effective way to build children’s understanding of numbers than asking them to solve the equation 2 + 2 = 4. Effective pedagogy helps children represent and communicate their ideas and engage their naturally playful ways of exploring the world, and it provides an appropriate mix of cognitive challenge and opportunity for self-regulation. See chapter 2 for a discussion of effective curricula and pedagogy.