The LEGO Foundation’s Post

This shocking statistic highlights the urgent need to invest in quality early childhood education (ECE) and support pre-primary teachers around the world. The World Bank Theirworld Early Childhood Development Action Network (ECDAN) #actforearlyyears

Everyone should read these takeaways from the first Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education: The Right to a Strong Foundation. If we truly want to improve literacy and numeracy rates globally, we have to start in the early years: "There is solid scientific evidence that access and exposure to quality learning opportunities early in life support the development of foundational skills needed not only for school readiness and success in primary school but also for flourishing throughout life. Early childhood care and education (ECCE) is the most transformative investment a country can make to give all children a fair start in life and combat inequalities early on."

These insights are the backbone of our work at Dost Education and hope more and more parents and teachers will work towards Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). #EarlyChildhoodCareandEducation #TalkCarePlay #ChildDevelopment #EarlyEducation

More philanthropic foundations need to prioritize the funding of early education to help emerging nations as this yields the highest ROI. The combination of children with foundational learning skills (i.e. critical thinking+ problem solving+ digital literacy) and access to technology (a plus if available!) will allow them to self learn and grow despite a poor school system.

The first Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education is out! It was co-published by UNESCO and UNICEF, The LEGO Foundation, Global Partnership for Education, International Labour Organization OECD - OCDE—OCDE, and the World Health Organization. You can read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/ekpS8UXM

Research suggests that the home and family environment play a crucial role in early learning. As a result, children in the poorest households have fewer opportunities to learn. ‘Only 55% of children aged 36 to 59 months in the poorest households are developmentally on track, compared to 78% in the richest households’ The first Global Report on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) leverages data to highlight the importance of ECCE in child development and proposes policy solutions to enhance ECCE service delivery. One significant challenge in ECCE delivery, as highlighted in the report, is the lack of funding and government spending. ‘Domestic spending on pre-primary education is unequal and falls below the international benchmark. Of 98 countries with data, global median spending on pre-primary education is just 0.4% of GDP, less than half of the recommended 1%’. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/e_7iJyeS

Why is early childhood care and education so important? Early childhood care and education (ECCE), which addresses the period from birth to 8 years old, is important because it capitalizes on a period of rich brain development for children and, when it is of good quality, can help them achieve their full potential. It can lay the foundation for good health and nutrition, learning and educational success, social-emotional learning, and economic productivity throughout life. Despite the evidence for these social, human and economic developmental gains, it is still often given low priority in education policy and investment and, where it does exist, may exclude marginalized groups. ECCE has its own extra vulnerability in that much of it is privately provided. What is the global situation for ECCE? As a snapshot of disparity, worldwide 75% of children were enrolled in pre-primary education one year before the official primary entry age in the school year ending in 2019, but in sub-Saharan Africa and in Northern Africa and Western Asia the rate was about 50% (GEM report 2021). In times of crisis the closure of schools and other institutions that provide social protection, health, nutrition, learning and socio-emotional nurturing to young children represents an immense threat to their development potential. ECCE was already a ‘blind spot’ in many countries before the COVID-19 pandemic and for that reason was made a part of the #Save Our Future campaign launched by UNESCO and partner organizations to protect and prioritize education as the key to recovery and the best investment for the future. Although some countries took measures to support families, caregivers and children, such as financial support, psychological counselling, and emergency childcare services for frontline volunteers, pre-primary education was relatively neglected compared to other levels of education. A UNESCO COVID-19 Education webinar, organized in 2020, under the patronage of Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, UNESCO Special Envoy on Literacy for Development, focused on the importance of ECCE to ensure learning and wellbeing of young children, especially the vulnerable, when educational and care services are disrupted. #talentServe

Children | Free Full-Text | The Power of Research and Stakeholder Collaboration in Enhancing Early Childhood Care and Education in Low- and Middle-Income Countries https://lnkd.in/e4iBHBhG

Reading through the National Institute for Early Education Research report "Using Early Childhood Data and Measurement to Leverage Change: Are We Making Progress": https://lnkd.in/eMHWCrh6 This stood out to me: "To date, much of the effort on #earlychildhood data has been “supply-side” driven, in that new tools are built without documentation of how these tools respond to the specific demands of governments, parents, and ECCE professionals for feasible, culturally relevant data that can be easily aggregated and shared to inform #policy and programmatic choices. To date, little work has explicitly examined the process of building demand for data within early childhood systems... Other issues that contribute to weak demand for data include lack of #transparency on what is being collected and by whom, poor communication of research and program evaluation results to policymakers, and lack of trust arising from contradictory results from different data sources... Critically, more attention is also needed to demand for data from practitioners, who are essential in using data to improve children’s experiences in ECCE...ECCE professionals could be important stakeholders in increasing demand for data." There is so much there in just that paragraph (page 7). Young children are precious and the idea of unintentionally harming them through data is extremely unsettling. Our practitioners are also vulnerable for historical and present day reasons. Liz Pettit is working diligently with NewDealDesign to co-create LENA's next generation of data with ECCE professional input to understand demand and align it with other stakeholder needs. It's tough work! If you're on this journey too, I'd love to hear from you.

The X Conference on Childhood Studies - New deadline for call for papers: 27.2.2024📣 We decided to extend the deadline for submitting abstracts for The X Conference on Childhood Studies at the request of the public😊! New deadline is 27.2. 🔷 We hope for abstract covering the conference theme "Childhood and communities". The notification of acceptance on this extended call is 5.3.2024. 🔷 Please see instructions here 👉https://lnkd.in/deVQ5KKu 🔷 If you have any questions about the submission process, please contact the congress secretariat directly at childhood2024@confedent.fi 🔷 General conference info 👉 https://lnkd.in/dtd8i-Dk Communities have an essential role in creating children’s habitats and well-being in childhood. As a result of the recent pandemic and other ongoing crises, the well-being of children has become a topic of discussion in daycare, schools, spare time, family- and working life, the economy, and security. When facing difficult circumstances and crises we are tackling complex problems that need a systemic and multidisciplinary approach in order to be solved. We need to engage different actors and endorse collective responsibility to support the well-being of individual children and their communities. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars from different research fields to share and discuss insights on factors that decrease and increase well-being and resilience in the everyday communal structures in which children live. #Childhood2024 #ChildhoodConf2024