A Toolkit for Measuring Early Childhood Development in Low and Middle-Income Countries

The Toolkit provides a practical, “how-to” guide for selection and adaptation of child development measurements for use in low- and middle-income countries. Users can follow the proposed step-by-step process to select, adapt, implement, and analyze early childhood development data for diverse purposes and projects. Researchers, evaluators, and program personnel from various disciplines interested in assessing early childhood development in low- and middle-income countries will find the book useful for planning and evaluating interventions, monitoring development over time, or conducting a situation analysis. The book updates and expands a previous 2009 edition, incorporating new research on the use of child development measurement tools in low- and middle-income countries. The ECD Measurement Inventory that accompanies this Toolkit contains 147 measurement tools for children under 8 years. For each test it reports the domains assessed, age range for which the tool is appropriate, method of administration, purpose of the assessment, origin and locations of use, logistics, and cost

Measuring and forecasting progress in education: what about early childhood?

A recent Nature article modelled within-country inequalities in primary, secondary, and tertiary education and forecast progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets related to education (SDG 4). However, their paper entirely overlooks inequalities in achieving Target 4.2, which aims to achieve universal access to quality early childhood development, care and preschool education by 2030. This is an important omission because of the substantial brain, cognitive and socioemotional developments that occur in early life and because of increasing evidence of early-life learning's large impacts on subsequent education and lifetime wellbeing. We provide an overview of this evidence and use new analyses to illustrate medium- and longterm implications of early learning, first by presenting associations between pre-primary programme participation and adolescent mathematics and science test scores in 73 countries and secondly, by estimating the costs of inaction (not making pre-primary programmes universal) in terms of forgone lifetime earnings in 134 countries. We find considerable losses, comparable to or greater than current governmental expenditures on all education (as percentages of GDP), particularly in low- and lower-middle-income countries. In addition to improving primary, secondary and tertiary schooling, we conclude that to attain SDG 4 and reduce inequalities in a post-COVID era, it is essential to prioritize quality early childhood care and education, including adopting policies that support families to promote early learning and their children's education

Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham /

Includes bibliographical references and index.Mode of access: Internet

A labour of love: the lived experience of the parents of prisoners and their role as human rights protectors

Moving beyond the traditional focus on the children and romantic partners of prisoners, this chapter draws on in-depth interviews with Mothers and Fathers of adult children to elicit their lived experience of caring for their imprisoned child. Adopting themes identified Gueta’s 2017 global meta-synthesis, this chapter illuminates important synergies, and disparities, between the accounts of parents of prisoners in England and Wales compared to extant international literature. For many the burden of caring for their imprisoned child was profound and all-encompassing. For some this burden became even heavier as they resorted to desperate measures to protect their children from physical and psychological harm within prison walls. The chapter then goes further and locates the burden of care carried by these parents in a human rights framework. Drawing comparisons with the Salakhov and Islyamova v Ukraine (2013) human rights case, the chapter examines the previously unconsidered role parents of prisoners can play as human rights protectors for their imprisoned child and the human rights implications of the psychological harm this labour can cause parents of prisoners

The effectiveness of Early Head Start for 3-year-old children and their parents

Early Head Start, a federal program begun in 1995 for low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers, was evaluated through a randomized trial of 3,001 families in 17 programs. Interviews with primary caregivers, child assessments, and observations of parent-child interactions were completed when children were 3 years old. Caregivers were diverse in race-ethnicity, language, and other characteristics. Regression-adjusted impact analyses showed that 3-year-old program children performed better than did control children in cognitive and language development, displayed higher emotional engagement of the parent and sustained attention with play objects, and were lower in aggressive behavior. Compared with controls, Early Head Start parents were more emotionally supportive, provided more language and learning stimulation, read to their children more, and spanked less. The strongest and most numerous impacts were for programs that offered a mix of home-visiting and center-based services and that fully implemented the performance standards early

The effectiveness of Early Head Start for 3-year-old children and their parents

Early Head Start, a federal program begun in 1995 for low-income pregnant women and families with infants and toddlers, was evaluated through a randomized trial of 3,001 families in 17 programs. Interviews with primary caregivers, child assessments, and observations of parent-child interactions were completed when children were 3 years old. Caregivers were diverse in race-ethnicity, language, and other characteristics. Regression-adjusted impact analyses showed that 3-year-old program children performed better than did control children in cognitive and language development, displayed higher emotional engagement of the parent and sustained attention with play objects, and were lower in aggressive behavior. Compared with controls, Early Head Start parents were more emotionally supportive, provided more language and learning stimulation, read to their children more, and spanked less. The strongest and most numerous impacts were for programs that offered a mix of home-visiting and center-based services and that fully implemented the performance standards early