WASHINGTON —COVID-19 has hit the youngest children’s learning the hardest, especially in low-income countries, accentuating the need for actionable and evidence-based strategies to deliver quality early childhood education (ECE) at scale. Released today, the World Bank’s new volume Quality Early Learning: Nurturing Children’s Potential reviews the science of early learning and offers practical advice on key elements and principles to deliver quality ECE.
The volume brings together a group of leading, multi-disciplinary experts in the field of early learning to distill the evidence on cost-effective practices to support children’s early learning in low- and middle-income countries. The report emphasizes that young children have enormous capacity to learn during their early years – a capacity that must be nurtured and harnessed in a deliberate manner. High quality ECE can help children develop the cognitive and socioemotional skills, executive function, and motivation that will help them succeed both in school and beyond. Investments in ECE establish the foundation to build the human capital needed for individual well-being and more equitable and prosperous societies.
“Many countries have a unique window of opportunity now to put in place the policies and system to deliver quality and equitable ECE progressively as access to ECE grows,” underscored Jaime Saavedra, World Bank Global Director for Education. “Getting this right early – both in the early years of children’s lives and in the early stages of setting up an ECE system – is easier and more efficient than remedying gaps in foundational learning and fixing systems of delivery later.”
Low access and poor-quality ECE contribute to the global learning crisis. An estimated 53 percent of children in low- and middle-income countries are “learning poor,” meaning they are unable to read and understand a short text by age 10. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the learning crisis, with learning poverty predicted to rise above 70 percent. As countries seek to build back better from the pandemic, even as they face tight resource constraints, investments in quality ECE should be part of an integral part of national plans to recover and accelerate learning.
The report stresses three key points:
Expansion of access to ECE must be balanced with efforts to ensure and improve quality. To ensure that investments in ECE lead to improved learning, the scale of ECE expansion should not exceed the speed at which a minimum level of quality can be ensured.
Investments that lead to more learning for children should be prioritized first. Key investments to boost quality in the classroom – including improving the capacity of the existing stock of the ECE workforce, adopting age-appropriate pedagogy, and ensuring safe and stimulating learning spaces – need not be very expensive or complex to be effective.
Systems that deliver quality early learning at scale are built intentionally and progressively over time through careful planning and multiple investments, including in the home environment and in other factors that influence early learning outside of school, especially for the most disadvantaged children.
Saavedra concluded, “The task is urgent. If we hope to produce capable and confident learners ready to face the challenges ahead, we must nurture every child’s capacity with investments in quality early childhood education for all. Too many three-, four-, and five-year-olds are already there. Waiting.”
