EFA 2000 Assessment > Thematic Studies >
Early Childhood Care and Development
Robert G. Myers
Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development
January 1999
SUMMARY AND UPDATE:
THE EFA GLOBAL THEMATIC REVIEW OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND DEVELOPMENT
Full Report (PDF) - Rapport francais (PDF)

This review of early childhood care and development (ECCD) has been commis-sioned as a contribution to the Year 2000 Assessment of Education for All (EFA). ECCD emerged at Jomtien as an important extension of the more traditional approach to basic edu-cation in which education began with entrance into school. Specifically, the Framework for Action fashioned at the World Conference set as one of the targets to be considered by sig-natories in their plans for the 1990s: "Expansion of early childhood care and development activities, including family and community interventions, especially for poor, disadvan-taged and disabled children." The Jomtien Declaration stated that "Learning begins at birth. This calls for early childhood care and initial education. These can be provided through arrangements involving families, communities or institutional programmes, as appropriate."

The information base for the review and analysis comes from:
1. a literature re-view,

2. available country reports prepared as part of the more general EFA Assessment, and

3. a survey of "knowledgeable people" involved in ECCD and coming from different geographic, disciplinary and organisational settings.

Changing Contexts

A brief overview of differences among contexts and of the dominant, forceful and varied changes that are occurring in the world in which ECCD is embedded, suggests that we should be humble with respect to our expectations about what World Conferences can accomplish. Continuing industrialisation and urbanisation, social prejudices, debt burdens, national conflicts and growing poverty and inequality combine with the extension of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, shifting policies and values linked to globalisation, economic recessions in some countries, and differential access to technology and resources create new demands, but also barriers to achieving desired ECCD goals. Therefore, modest gains should be celebrated and talk of "advances" must be kept in context. Moreover, the variety among settings and the immense differences in the timing and incidence of particular trends for particular countries, with accompanying differences in their influence on early childhood care and development, leads us to believe that generalisations must be tempered, even when focussing on the "Majority World" . Policies and programmes must be adjusted to particular contexts.

Tendencies since 1990

In the Well-being of Children

Over the last 10 years, major advances have been made world-wide in reducing in-fant and child mortality. Important declines have occurred also in levels of malnutrition in some countries, and the consumption of micro-nutrients has improved. However, malnutrition continues at high levels in many countries, particularly in rural areas. Moreover, there is evidence that feeding programmes, unless combined with other measures, may not be particularly effective in decreasing malnutrition.

Unfortunately, very few countries provide us with measures of the psycho-social well-being of young children or of their learning during their early years. Improvements are inferred from changes in subsequent school performance and retention, but these are at best indirect measures of a child's general development or psycho-social well-being.

In ECCD enrolments

As of this writing (January 1999) it has been possible to obtain access to 64 country assessments, almost all of which provide statistics on enrolments. Missing are reports from Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the documentation that is available from the EFA country reviews, together with earlier documentation (reports of regional meetings, UNICEF annual reports, special studies, etc.) suggests that:

  • A general tendency has been for enrolments to increase since 1990. In some cases enrolment has decreased, particularly (and massively) in countries that were part of the Soviet Union (until 1991) and in countries of Eastern Europe that were previously under Soviet influence.

  • Although there are some cases of large, and even rather dramatic, growth during the period, the increases can more generally be characterised as small and marginal.

  • The variation among countries in levels of access is huge, ranging from almost zero to virtually100%, with a general tendency for enrolments to be related to GNP.

  • Attention continues to be concentrated on "pre-schooling" and on children ages 4 to 6, particularly on the year just prior to primary school. A corollary is that few children under 4 in the Majority World are being attended in organised ECCD programmes.

  • Urban children are more likely to be enrolled in some sort of ECCD programme than rural children.

  • Children from families that are better off are more likely to be enrolled than children from families with few resources.

    • For most countries for whom reports were received there is relative gender parity in enrolments. There are, however, a few exceptions where boys are favoured, particularly in countries of the Middle East.

    The relative roles of the State, the private and social sectors and communities in providing ECCD services varies widely among countries; whereas the trend is toward greater government involvement in some, a tendency for growth of the private sector dominates in others.

    As suggested above, these generalisations need to be tempered and a more detailed analysis is needed based on the country reviews which, at best will provide a cloudy picture given the current state of information collection systems (see appendix on indicators).

    In Conditions Affecting ECCD Programming

    Knowledgeable people and country reports have identified a wide range of advances in conditions, differing from country to country, that affect the delivery of ECCD services and their potential effect on the well-being of children. These include:

    Conceptual shifts and changes in the knowledge base and its dissemination

    The most frequently mentioned (by survey respondents) advance in knowledge related to ECCD during the 1990s was an advance in our understanding of how the brain develops and functions. Also mentioned with some frequency was a growing body of knowledge coming from research studies and programme evaluations showing long-term benefits of early intervention programmes for children at risk. Other new avenues of research that are beginning to influence practice include studies of: "resilience", conditions under which programs can have a negative affect on child development, and childrearing practices and patterns.

    Conceptual shifts that seem to be "in process" include movement toward:

    1. placing greater emphasis on social and cultural influences on the process of development, replacing a behaviourist viewpoint and complementing a more individual and "constructivist" view of development and giving renewed importance to the role of the teacher and to the place of language in the teaching/learning process; and

    2. questioning the concept of universal "best practices" grounded in developmental psychology, accompanied by greater attention to discovering, respecting, and incorporating cultural differences into thinking about how early childhood education and care "should" occur, with viewpoints grounded in anthropology, sociology and ethics.

    Also noted were conceptual shifts in the manner in which planning, programming and implementing organisations are thinking about their task of moving knowledge into action, involving, for instance:

    1. viewing early childhood programming within a broader framework of poverty alleviation or transitions to democracy,

    2. linking the concept of "holistic" development to integral programming cutting across sectoral lines;

    3. preventing -- as constrasted with "compensating" for problems once they occur.

    4. In the air also is a change in how governments see their role, with a tendency to shift at least some of the burden of providing services from exclusive government responsibility to partnerships and sometimes to the marketplace through "privatisation."

    5. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, and perhaps to a lesser extent the conceptual frame provided at Jomtien are helping to shift thinking, from a "needs" perspective which tends to be associated more directly with focussed or "targeted" interventions to a universal "rights" perspective, and from early attention as "preschooling" to an ECCD perspective.
    The knowledge base has also been fed by experience in the form of many programmes and projects mounted during the 1990s and earlier, that are deemed "effective" and that provide a wealth of ideas and options.

    Although the above may sound encouraging, these shifts in knowledge and concept are slow and there is a lament by many that new knowledge does not seem to transfer into changes in policies or programming. In part that is related to a feeling that the dissemination process is deficient, despite noted increases in publications, fora, inter-country discussions, websites and the emergence of networks regional and national as well as international networks.

    Changes in attitudes/awareness

    Related to the growth of a knowledge base and to its dissemination is an increased awareness, within governments and the NGO community, and among policy-makers and intellectuals, regarding:

    1. the importance of early childhood care and education (and particularly of the earliest years),

    2. what early childhood development is (for instance, recognition that it is an active, holistic and integral process involving the child as a person) and

    3. how to go about fostering it.

    In the third category is included a new openness to:

  • diversifying attention, broadening the range of options and including programmes directed to family and community as well as to the child

  • acceptance of non-formal approaches (but not as "second best");

  • developing home-school partnerships;

  • working with non-governmental organisations;

  • inter-sectoral collaboration and co-ordination; and

  • thinking beyond enrolment to quality.

    • Although examples may be cited for all of the above, it is clear that greater awareness often does not translate into changes in policy or programmes; indeed, these same topics are included in the category of problems to be overcome and in recommendations of lines of action that need to be pursued.

    Changes in policies and in legal and legislative frameworks for programming, internationally and national

    Country reports and survey respondents often noted specific changes in laws, the development of policies and the explicit inclusion of ECCD in national plans as advances in the field of ECCD. At the same time, the lack of good and comprehensive laws and policies, particularly for children under 3, characterises too many countries. And, there is considerable criticism of some of the broader government policies (for instance, economic adjustment policies) that affect ECCD indirectly and are often linked to international agency policies.

    The availability of resources.

    There is no doubt that the overall level of international financing available for ECCD has increased a great deal since1990. At the same time, questions have been raised about the style of funding organisations and about the national capacity to use available international funds well. The picture is not so clear with respect to national budgets where some important increases and some decreases have occurred over the decade. Although it has not been possible to determine from country reports the level of funding available for ECCD (with a very few exceptions), the scant evidence suggests that government funding is very low (often less than 2% of the total education budget). In most of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and parts of Asia, major responsibility for ECCD is left to families, communities and non-governmental organisations. And, while few of the people surveyed point immediately to lack of funding as a barrier to advance in the ECCD field, there is a pronounced feeling that the field is under-funded, that public financial support is low and unstable, and that the lack of resources is an important problem.

    A similar picture appears for human resources, with indications of advances in professional formation in many countries set against a strong feeling that human resources are lacking and that training is needed at all levels, but particularly at local levels as decentralisation occurs.

    Organisational bases, strengthened and consolidated, both governmental and non-governmental

    Observations by survey respondents in this category are varied indeed, but many are related to on-going processes of diversification and decentralisation, covering such changes as: new strength in local NGOs and municipal governments, the incorporation of early childhood development into different sectoral programmes. Mention is made of the formation of inter-sectoral committees and councils.

    As with other categories, this set of advances is cited for a limited number of settings and must be set against others in which the organisational weakness of NGOs, and local organisations and governmental bodies is emphasised and the failure to coordinate actions is pointed out.

    Changes in ECCD practice

    Some shifts have occurred in the processes of training and teaching, which, together with creation of new curricula and better materials, are intended to redefine and improve programme quality. However, these advances are modest. More attention has been given to increasing enrolments than to improving quality. For instance, although there have been important advances in the number and quality of ECCD training programmes at various levels, training continues to be seen by many as the most important need in the ECCD field. And, whereas it is possible to cite curriculum changes in some countries, moving the field toward active learning, play and guided discovery, the tendency to treat early education as an extension downward of primary school continues and cultural constructions of curricula involving indigenous communities are rare. The good intentions fostered through training and curricula and materials are often undercut by: an outrageously large ratio of children to adults in ECCD centers; a tendency to treat adults in ECCD parental education programmes as children; an inability to incorporate a community dimension into larger-scale ECCD programmes.

    Problems and Proposals: Where do we go from here?

    This section sets out problem areas and needs as identified by survey respondents and as found in recent publications. The following listing, which is expressed in terms of "deficits" should not be interpreted to mean that countries have not made advances. Indeed, in addressing these deficits, it would be well to begin by securing and extending the gains already made in these areas.

    Weak political will

    The need continues to convince politicians, policy makers, programmers, and education officials, often now at local levels, of the importance of ECCD. To create will, we need to develop:

  • better strategies of communicating, lobbying and advocating.

  • a better information base, with improved indicators (see attached note), statistics, monitoring systems, studies and evaluations.

    • Weak policy and legal frameworks

    To formulate and strengthen policy we need to:

  • Undertake analytical studies of existing policies affecting children, looking beyond narrowly conceived educational policies to, for instance social welfare, health, and labour policies that affect child care and development during the early years.

  • Seek conformity with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, incorporating principles of the best interests of the child, non-discrimination and participation.

  • Work closely with the legal profession

  • Establish norms and standards (for private as well as public, and including provisions for constant revision) that are not so rigid or high as to be unworkable but which will assure positive attention to children.

    • Lack of, or poor use of, financial resources

    ECCD programmes generally command a small portion of governmental budgets, relative to percentage of young children in the population. In budgetary terms, children (and especially young children) are clearly not placed first. There is, therefore, a need to:

  • Increase allocations to ECCD in national budgets and make more permanent commitments to such funding;

  • Strengthen the capacity of states and municipalities to obtain resources for ECCD;

  • Seek cost-effective approaches, including quality community-based non-formal approaches to ECCD;

  • Explore more vigorously such alternative (to government budgets) avenues of funding as debt swaps, philanthropic contributions, and private sector involvement;

  • Co-ordinate the increase of financial resources with attention to the capacity to handle such resources and the strengthening of human resources.

  • Provide access to central pots of money by local organisations so as to respond better to local demand expressed in proposals originating in communities.

    • Uniformity (Lack of options)

    The bureaucratically convenient tendency to extend the same programme to all children conflicts with the need to tailor ECCD programmes to cultural, geographic, economic, and age differences. This tendency is reinforced by the notion that ECCD is the same as "pre-school" which, in turn, is simply an extension downward of primary schooling. We need, therefore, to:

  • Think in terms of complementary and varied approaches to ECCD that include family and community-based programmes.

  • Involve NGOs more actively as partners.

  • Decentralise programme responsibility as well as administrative responsibility, with attention to building local capacity.

  • Construct culturally relevant programmes with local communities rather than impose ECCD practices from the centre.

    • Poor quality

    There is a pressing need to:

  • Re-examine training and supervision and to provide sound training (both pre-service and in-service) at all levels in with respect to a diversity of ECCD approaches.

  • Reduce the number of children (or families) per education/care agent.

  • Improve and reformulate curricula, taking into account not only "best practices" but also local definition of what constitutes "best practices".

  • Draw upon existing experience in a more systematic way.

  • Establish better systems to monitor and evaluate both children and programmes.

    • Lack of attention to particular populations

    The following "disadvantaged" populations need to be given greater attention:

  • low-income, rural, indigenous, girls, HIV/AIDS, children 0-3, pregnant and lactating mothers, working mothers, fathers.

    • Lack of co-ordination

    If a holistic and integrated notion of learning and development is to be honoured and if resources are to be used more effectively greater co-ordination is needed

    a. among government programmes of health, welfare, social security, nutrition, education, rural or community development, etc.,

    b. within the education sector, especially between ECCD and primary schooling, and

    c. between governmental and non-governmental organisations.

    We need to:

  • Create inter-sectoral, inter-organisational co-ordinating bodies.

  • Construct joint programmes crossing bureaucratic boundaries.

  • Strengthen the ability of families and communities to call upon and bring together services that are presently offered in an uncoordinated fashion..

  • Seek agreement on the populations that are most in need of attention and direct services to those populations in a converging manner.

  • Build partnerships - A clearer definition is needed of the roles of the state and civil society and of forms of partnership.

    • Narrow conceptualisation

    The conceptual frameworks guiding programmes intended to improve early childhood care and development and early learning have come primarily from developmental psychology and from formal education. There is a need to go beyond the knowledge that these fields can provide to incorporate broader views with cultural, social and ethical dimensions brought to bear. There is a need also to relate ECCD programming, conceptually and operationally, to other programmes lines that begin from analyses of children's rights, poverty, working mothers, rural development, special needs, street children, refugees, adolescents, gender, etc.

    Where should the emphasis be placed? Where should we concentrate efforts?

    The first answer to this question must be, "It depends."

    Regions and countries (and parts of countries) bring to the table extremely different conditions and cultural views and are at very different points in a process. It is therefore inappropriate to try and set general priorities for action in all situations. In some places emphasis must be given to advocacy and to getting the policy and legal frameworks right. In others, emphasis needs to be given to problems related to combating HIV/AIDS. In others, facilities need to be repaired.

    Consistent with this posture, the second answer to the question must be, "Each country (or perhaps even municipality) must take stock and decide upon its priorities."

    Having said the above, it does seem appropriate to

    1. present my own biased opinion of areas that seem to need special emphasis and that seem to stretch across many settings and

    2. to suggest some general guidelines that represent the author's particular view of what needs to be put front and centre as the field evolves.

    Some possible areas of special interest.

    A. Training and Supervision

    Starting from the premise that the quality of programmes will be only as good as the people who operate them, it is logical to place emphasis on assuring that ECCD people at various levels are well motivated and are part of a continuous process of training.

    B. Supporting, educating and involving parents and other family members

    Parents and other family members will continue to be the main influences on young children's lives for the foreseeable future, especially for children under 3 or 4 years of age. Perhaps the greatest and most lasting effects on a child's learning and development can come from improvements in the capacity of parents to provide a supportive environment for learning and development. As suggested earlier, there are many possible ways to support and work with parents and family members and the particular combination of how to go about this work will vary with conditions.

    C. Evaluation and monitoring

    Giving priority to building monitoring and evaluation systems derives from more than an academic bias. Among the lessons learned from successful programmes is that effectiveness is fostered if programmes develop slowly and are monitored and adjusted regularly. The information that comes from monitoring and evaluation will serve advocacy purposes as well as policy and administrative purposes. The information should help the process of reconceptualisation that many survey respondents felt is necessary. The failure of the EFA process to provide for adequate indicators for the ECCD area testifies to the need for work in this area.

    Possible guidelines: a starting point for discussion

  • Take a holistic view of the child and of the learning and development process, adopting cross-sectoral policies.

  • Concentrate on the well-being of children and not on the size of particular programmes or on building bureaucracies.

  • Begin with pre-natal attention.

  • Include the excluded. Focus on equity.

  • Be family-focused and community-based, fostering participation.

  • Seek cultural relevance, determined by those involved, and accommodation, beginning where people are, building on inherent strengths.

  • Build child-focussed partnerships.

  • Seek cost-effectiveness, broadly defined.

  • Avoid formulas. Be open to diversity and to complementary approaches.

  • Seek quality.

  • Incorporate monitoring and evaluation into programmes from the outset.

    • In Closing

    In this international forum, organised by international organisations, it seems appropriate to reflect on the role that has been, and can be, played by international organi-sations in promoting and supporting programmes directed at improving the care and devel-opment of young children. In gathering information for this review of ECCD, it was clear that international organisations have been given credit for and have played several important roles in helping ECCD to extend and improve. These include assistance in providing frameworks for analysis and action (Jomtien, the Convention), strengthening the knowledge base and disseminating information (supporting research, evaluation, monitoring, the creation of net-works, publications, etc), advocating (by organising international fora, by negotiating conditions for financial support, and by marshalling the media), as well as by providing technical and financial support. These efforts have certainly contributed to many of the "advances" noted earlier.

    At the same time, it is important to recognise that these forms of assistance repre-sent interventions that imply certain value positions, that they depend for their result as much on the manner in which the assistance is offered as they do on the amount of assistance provided, and that can have negative as well as positive consequences.

    Consider the following:

    Frameworks and knowledge -- the basis for lobbying and constructing ECCD programmes -- continue to originate, for the most part, in the Minority World. According-ly, a tension often arises between "received truth" linked to the Minority World knowledge base and values guiding an agency, and local knowledge linked to another set of values rooted in some part of the Majority World. These may over-lap, but are different. Within the international community there are tensions as well. For instance, the universal rights framework being espoused by some can conflict with a needs-based approach and "targeting". The way in which these tensions are handled determines to some degree how "success" is defined for projects and can wind up creating a barrier to action because agreement is lacking.

    Implications:

  • Although the current attention to involving all "stakeholders" in the process of creating a project represents an important step toward breaking with the past tendency to impose, we are far from making that participation real and meaningful.

  • Additional work is needed to change past styles and methods.

  • Major changes are needed in the consultant system which continues to depend for technical assistance on Minority World consultants (myself included). More effort should be put into drawing upon local knowledge and experience, embodied in local consultants.

    • Because programming for ECCD is at an early stage in many countries, it is possible to construct programmes in innovative ways, taking into account differing conditions, seeking convergence, and involving local communities in the process. This implies a need to move slowly, to experiment and reinvent, to build collaborative enterprises, to nurture, to support a variety of initiatives and to build capacity. Unfortunately, these needs run counter to social and political desires to move quickly so that as many people as possible are served. They run counter to bureaucratic desires to simplify administration by providing the same service to all and to avoid collaboration across sectoral lines. And they run counter to the characteristics of many international organisations where promotion and success is equated with the numbers of children and families served, with the ability to promote the particular doctrine of the agency, and/or with the ability to move money. The quantitative focus and a sense of urgency inhibits developing quality programmes, current rhetoric notwithstanding.

    Implications:

  • Place less emphasis on expanding enrolments and on extending one particular programme to all; place more emphasis on quality, beginning with solid support for training, with local input into what is considered a quality programme, and with a vision of "scale" as the sum of many efforts.

  • Take a longer term view and begin slowly; avoid overloading systems financially with too much money too soon. Be sure cash is accompanied by capacity-building.

  • Develop loan and grant instruments that are demand driven rather than supply-driven, that allow varied responses to differentiated local demands.

  • Find ways to work more meaningfully on the ground with NGOs.

    • For many international organisations, the changes suggested above constitute a huge challenge that goes to the heart of how organisations function. In a meeting where commitment to change by national governments is being sought, a parallel commitment might be asked of international organisations that goes well beyond a resource commitment and includes re-examination of values and the ethics of intervention styles and modes of operation.

    Appendix 1: A Brief Note on EFA Indicators

    The two indicators that were suggested by the EFA Forum for use in the country Reviews are both quantitative indicators of access or enrolment:

    a. the percentage of the age group enrolled, and

    b. the percentage of new entrants to primary school who have had some early education. These indicators are limited in what they can tell us about ECCD and need to be interpreted with caution.

    Consider the following:

  • Only 2 indicators for ECCD were recommended vs. 13 for primary schooling;

  • Both are indicators of access or enrolment; there are no quality indicators, no indicators of the status of learning or development of children during the early years, no process indicators and no financial indicators.

  • The age range recommended for reporting is 3 to 5, leaving out indicators of attention during the earlier years.
    • Direct comparisons of enrolment levels and percentages among countries should be regarded with some caution because there are significant differences in:

  • the definition of the age group for whom data is presented;

  • the baseline year and the year for which the latest enrolment data are presented;

  • the definition of what constitutes an early childhood program ;

  • the days and hours that programmes are operating;

  • the degree to which centres providing early childhood attention are allowed to operate in an irregular manner, outside the official system and therefore outside the official statistics;

  • the use of gross (vs. net) enrolment ratios creates a bias for some countries but not others, related to the varying percentage of over-aged children in programmes; and,

  • the reliability of the figures.

    • When looking at increases in enrolment it is important to take into account the baseline from which the increases are being made. It is possible to have increased enrolment by, for instance, 500% over 10 years, but still report an enrolment level that covers less than 5% of the age group. And, as full enrolment is approached, it is more difficult, statistically and in terms of involving more students, to show an increase.

    In some country reports, the requested data were not presented, sometimes because the enrolment statistics were lacking or because census/population data for the relevant age group was lacking. The number of new entrants with early education was not presented for many countries because this information is not normally collected.

    Enrolment data tends to be collected at the outset of each year and to be based on registrations rather than actual participation in a program. Such information does not take into account cases of children who never arrive even though they are registered nor changes that occur during the year, including cases of children who decide not to continue after a few days or weeks. The stability of the enrolment of children in programmes varies from country to country.

    In some country reports the age range was not made clear.

    In many country studies, the data are not disaggregated to show differences by age, geographic location. In only rare cases are enrolment data presented in relation to "disadvantage" as defined, for instance by levels of poverty or by minority status.

    These observations suggest that an immense amount of work needs to be done to obtain meaningful indicators and information, even of a quantitative nature with a focus on enrolment.

    Two suggestions are offered:

    • First, all ECCD enrolment information should be disaggregated by age and reported for children 0 to 1, 1 to 2, etc. in relation to the current population figures for each of these age groups. Only then can any kind of international comparison begin to take on meaning.

    • Second, national committees should be formed and a process initiated intended to reach agreement on the particular indicators thought to be most significant at national and sub-national levels, leaving aside the very restrictive criteria of "international comparison." Included in such deliberations should be attention to combining current information about health, nutrition and physical development with information that might be provided on psycho-social development.

    Appendix 2. Survey of Knowledgeable People in the Field of ECCD

    The Survey Instrument contained an introductory statement, a request for personal information (years of experience, present position, place of origin and present location) and the perspective from which the response to the survey was being made, together with the following five questions:

    1. What have been the main "advances" or achievements in the ECCD field during this decade?

    2. What have been the major reasons for these advances and/or the major barriers to progress in the field?

    3. What ECCD projects of programmes do you think have been particularly effective?

    4. What are the most important problems in the field of ECCD that still need to be resolved?

    5. What would you suggest as priority lines of action for the next decade in ECCD?

    This survey does not pretend to be representative. The people chosen were known by the author to be people who are knowledgeable about the field from a variety of perspectives or in a few cases were people recommended who fulfil the same criterion. The Instrument was sent by e-mail to 120 people. Sixty-two individuals replied (52%). Of these, 37 people replied with reference to the country in which they were living/working; 9 replied from a regional perspective; and 16 were global responses.

    Geographic Distribution

  • The 37 country level replies came from 22 countries, distributed as follows:

    Latin America (Peru, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Argentina)
    Caribbean (Jamaica)
    Sub-Saharan Africa (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Kenya, Zanzibar)
    Middle-East and N. Africa (Turkey, Egypt, Yemen)
    S.E. Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore)
    S. Asia (India , Bangladesh and Nepal)
    China, Hong Kong, Mongolia
    Europe (Sweden)

  • The regional responses came from:

    Latin America
    Africa
    SE. Asia

  • Global responses

    Institutional Distribution

  • The distribution of the institutional location of respondents was as follows:

    University
    NGOs (including 4 int'l NGO)
    Foundations (all from van Leer Foundation)
    UNICEF
    UNESCO
    Other UN-related agencies (World Bank, IADB, OAS)
    Other international (OECD, USAID)
    Govenment agency

  • Field of Expertise

    Only two of four respondents came from health or nutrition backgrounds and programmes. Most came from an early childhood development and/or education background. Respondents also included people with backgrounds in economics, psychology, anthropology, and in several cases the background was unknown.

  • Accumulated Experience

    The total years of experience in the field of early childhood that has been accumulated by the 60 respondents who indicated their experience was 1004.