ECE Management: Some Lessons from the Field

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SPOTLIGHT

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,

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including kindergarten classrooms. In these countries, school headmasters usually designate another teacher to support them with specific functions (Angola, Cameroon, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan), and in others, such as Morocco, the concept of ECE school leadership does not currently exist. There are no school heads at all in many countries’ community schools. • Government still plays a major role in hiring. In most countries, hiring processes are carried out by the ministry of education at both the national and regional levels. In other cases, they are carried out by municipalities.

The difference between public and private sector ECE centers is that private centers can directly select and hire teachers. • Qualifications needed for leadership vary greatly across low- and middle-income countries. Most countries require ECE leader candidates to have a high school diploma and between five and ten years of professional experience working in a school. However, the qualification requirements are diverse among countries in the sample. For example, Jordan requires a master’s degree, whereas other countries require only a high school diploma (North Macedonia, Pakistan), nine years of education (Burundi), or just previous experience (Angola). Some countries do not even have an established framework for school leaders, and the role is carried out in a more informal way (Morocco). In Cameroon, most ECE center leaders do not have to achieve a special qualification before being appointed head of an ECE center. In Angola, although Presidential Decree 129/17 of June 16 (Status of ECE Subsystem) states that heads of schools should be ECE teachers with at least five years of experience, there are many cases in which other arrangements constitute the main criteria for nominations in public institutions. • Terms for appointments of school leaders do not tend to be fixed. The term duration is not specified, nor is the number of times a leader can be reappointed. • In general, school leaders cannot hire or evaluate teachers because other ministerial or municipal authorities have the authority to do so. In Morocco, for example, school principals are evaluated for functions related to the primary school only and there is no regulatory framework for the preschool level. The exception is Cameroon, where the headmaster or headmistress can select, hire, and evaluate teachers. These evaluations have consequences for the professional advancement of teachers. Parent-teacher associations, using the guidance of the headmasters or headmistresses, can also hire teachers to meet needs in specific academic institutions. In private schools, school leaders do hire and evaluate their teaching staff and their results may have consequences. • Regarding specific training for ECE leaders or coordinators, there are in-service training programs in Angola, Brazil, Cameroon, Egypt, Mali, and

Pakistan. In the other countries surveyed, no national in-service training

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program is in place for ECE leaders. The themes of these training programs are not specified, except in Brazil, where the emphasis is on operational management, food programs, and the like. The need for ECE leader and coordinator training is urgent. In Brazil, for example, the

School Census for manager position professionals has a field on specialization courses for ECE. Of the 91,399 professionals who are registered under the Census, only 11 percent have taken a preschool-related specialization course. • There are no incentives for those who attend director training programs, except in Cameroon, Egypt, and Pakistan, where these are more related to salary increases for assuming director functions. By contrast, community

ECE leaders in rural areas, where the most vulnerable children learn and sometimes have only one teacher, do not receive any training (Cameroon,

Mali). It is evident that the reality of the role of the ECE center leader does not match with what the theory and international good practices propose. While recognizing the efforts that these countries are making, continual and sustained change will be needed to accelerate quality ECE. Behind each ECE leader are teachers and countless students whose physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development are at risk at this critical stage of their development.

In this complex context, there are some countries that have made efforts to increase access to education, usually focusing on access to primary grades. However, ECE is crucial for building good cognitive and social foundations that would make primary school more productive for children. The focus should be on integrating and mainstreaming ECE management into the management and regulatory framework of primary education. This integration will require specialized management and leadership who understand the need for investments and quality service delivery. This means training leaders—who not only take on the administrative tasks of the center but also provide pedagogical leadership—on how to accompany and support their teachers, effectively observe classrooms, give timely feedback, monitor each child’s progress related to the curriculum, and build a strong and nurturing relationship with parents. Unfortunately, little of this in practice is seen in the low- and middle-income countries surveyed.

a The authors would like to thank the World Bank Early Years Fellows who answered the survey: Saed Alzawahreh, Amna Ansari, Bárbara Barbosa, Martin

Galevski, Etienne A. Guirou, António Felix B. Jerónimo, Soukaina Tazi, Sara

Velásquez, Rana Yacoub, and Zeineb Ben Yahmed.