EARLY LEARNING PARTNERSHIP E L P SEPTEMBER 2016 EARLY LEARNING PARTNERSHIP Country-Level Activities Afghanistan Afghanistan’s unmet needs are severe and access to early childhood development (ECD) services is severely limited. ELP funds are supporting a ground-up review Assessing National EARLY of existing ECD services and needs and the publication of a SABER-ECD country ECD Needs and Services LEARNING report. These findings are being used to draft a National ECD Strategy and costed PARTNERSHIP PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–17 implementation plan. Working with partners, the WBG team is using ELP funds GRANT: $150,000 to design and pilot a tool to assess early learning, which the government will be able to use to evaluate individual ECD centers for quality and performance as it expands its coverage of early learning. Bangladesh This project builds on Bangladesh’s Income Support Program for the Poorest (ISPP), designed to reach mothers and young children in the poorest rural areas, Income-Support-Linked by linking parent training sessions with the distribution of cash transfers. ELP ECD and Child Nutrition funds are supporting the design and testing of materials that address nutrition for Rural Mothers and health as well as the nurturing of cognitive, social, and language skills. ELP PROJECT PERIOD: 2015 – 17 funds are also being used to evaluate the interventions’ effectiveness, monitor the quality of services, and measure mothers’ retention and application of what they GRANT: $125,000 learn. These activities will inform program expansion. This project will integrate early childhood into the government’s cash-transfer Burkina Faso (1) program for poor families, which covers a large swath of the population. The Promoting ECD through a ELP is supporting the design, piloting, and evaluation of several methods for Cash Transfer Program promoting ECD and good nutrition, including communitywide social and PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–17 behavior change communications, small-group training for mothers, and home visits. ELP funding will also help strengthen the Ministry of Social Action and GRANT: $100,000 National Solidarity’s capacity to manage the newly augmented program. Burkina Faso (2) This project will provide preschools in rural areas with access to low-cost, high- quality curriculum and teacher training by introducing an innovative technology: Improving Preschool Quality interactive audio instruction. This technology is highly affordable and mobile, through Interactive Audio and can be powered in remote areas by modest solar charging arrangements, so it Instruction lends itself to scaling up access to quality ECD. The ELP support has two elements: PROJECT PERIOD: 2016 – 19 supervising the design and testing of the ECD curriculum over a four-year period, and assisting with a process evaluation to track the project’s progress and measure GRANT: $128,050 its effectiveness. Ethiopia In Ethiopia, there are many early childhood education services, but the government needs to identify a package of interventions that will be cost- Scaling Up and Sustaining effective, scalable, sustainable, and tailored to the country and culture. The ELP Quality School-Based is supporting the government’s work in accomplishing this by funding analyses Preschool of need and program effectiveness. Findings from these studies will be applied PROJECT PERIOD: 2016 – 17 by the government as it determines how best to expand access to ECE at the national level, with a focus on reaching disadvantaged children. GRANT: $150,000 India In India, the government is currently considering ways to expand access to Madagascar In Madagascar, the government is tackling chronic malnutrition and gaps in early childhood education (ECE) and early childhood development (ECD). With child development with a community-based pilot in which different types Strengthening Early Grade ELP support, the project team is reviewing existing ECD interventions and Promoting Integrated Child of interventions are being used to simultaneously address these different Learning in India practices, sharing in-country and international best practices, and developing Nutrition and Development needs. The ELP is supporting evaluations of the pilot’s impact and cost- PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–17 implementation plans, early learning standards, and student assessments for PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–16 effectiveness; findings from these evaluations will inform the development and GRANT: $250,000 grades 1 and 2 to de conducted through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the implementation of the government’s National ECD Strategy. The supported GRANT: $90,000 largest basic education project in the world. ELP support is also aiding in the work will yield a SABER-ECD assessment, a diagnostic survey, and an operational development of learner-friendly teaching-learning materials, and piloting of manual and guidelines, all of which will be scaled up through future projects with packages for school-readiness. World Bank finance. A process evaluation will also be conducted and published. Kenya (1) In Kenya, where many children do not speak one of the “official” languages and Malawi This work consists of a workshop to present the findings of an evaluation books in local languages are hard to come by, an intervention called EMERGE conducted recently with World Bank support to assess the impact of community- Evaluating Parenting Evaluating Whether based ECD interventions on school readiness and early learning. The evaluation Reading is distributing age- and culturally appropriate books as well as parent Training and Home-based training to improve school readiness among children ages two to six. To assess Community ECD Training covered four of Malawi’s 28 districts. The workshop will also share international Reading Readiness the impact of EMERGE, an evaluation is being conducted by Innovations for Affects School Readiness evidence of best practices. PROJECT PERIOD: 2015 – 16 Poverty Action. The ELP is funding this evaluation, as well as supporting the PROJECT PERIOD: 2016 development of content for caregiver training and developing and refining local- GRANT: $79,500 GRANT: $25,000 language children’s books. Kenya (2) To determine whether private-sector innovation can deliver high-quality Mali The conflict in northern Mali has resulted in a large displaced population, with many refugee families now living in the southern region. The Ministry of Feasibility of Scaling Up preschool for poor Kenyans, the ELP supported a feasibility study to determine Assessing National ECD Education’s early childhood development (ECD) interventions seek to address the whether a full-scale evaluation of the Bridge International Academies can be Needs and Services an Affordable Private undertaken. The Bridge model provides low-cost private pre-primary education. needs of these vulnerable families, particularly in Bamako, Segou, and Sikasso. Preschool Model The feasibility study will rely on piloting and monitoring take-up as well as the PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–17 This ELP-supported project is building up the government’s general capacity for ECD planning and implementation, including research to find out what PROJECT PERIOD: 2016–18 validity of assessment instruments. GRANT: $204,000 are the most effective ways to integrate ECD into its ongoing Education for All GRANT: $42,000 Emergency Project. This includes a baseline study in the intervention areas, a review of the costs of ECD interventions in vulnerable environments, and developing ECD activities for finance in an upcoming larger project. Lesotho In Lesotho, three types of early childhood development (ECD) services are prevalent: center-based, home-based, and primary-school based. This project’s Evaluating Three ECD goal is to assist the government and other stakeholders with an empirical analysis Mauritania In Mauritania, the government’s safety net program of cash transfers is being Service Models of the effectiveness of each of these models, ultimately so it can determine supplemented by the inclusion of early learning activities to improve caregivers’ Reaching Parents and Young knowledge of early childhood development (ECD) and to promote better which should be scaled. To that end, the ELP will support a diagnostic review PROJECT PERIOD: 2016-18 Children through Cash parenting practices. ELP funding is supporting the design and testing of early of the three service models, carry out a financial simulation of ECD services for GRANT: $111,000 Transfers to Promote ECD learning activities and materials adapted to the Mauritanian context, as well the country’s Education Sector Plan, and help with early learning and reading assessments. PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–18 as new delivery platforms (including visual and audio), and the piloting of interventions among poor households. The work also includes impact studies, GRANT: $220,000 advocacy for early learning, and the drafting of an implementation plan for national scale-up. Liberia This project is part of a larger effort to address poverty and unemployment among young Liberians by working in partnership with the Bank’s Economic Training Young Women Empowerment of Adolescent Girls and Young Women (EPAG) project. In in ECD Job Skills this work, the ELP is supporting the development of a pilot to train young Mozambique The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health in Mozambique are women for professional opportunities as preschool teachers. The project is integrating early childhood development (ECD) into their education and PROJECT PERIOD: 2016 – 17 Integrating ECD into Rural maternal and child nutrition programs targeting rural communities. The ELP is creating curriculum for an early childhood development (ECD) job skills pilot, Maternal and Child Nutrition GRANT: $135,000 supporting a multi-sectoral evaluation of the impact of these efforts as well as a based on existing curricula and EPAG training materials. The ELP team is Interventions complementary process evaluation. Support is also enabling field supervision of providing oversight for the pilot and evaluating impact and will publish a report synthesizing the lessons learned. PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–17 the interventions as well as assistance to the government in the form of South- South knowledge exchanges (involving counterparts in Brazil). GRANT: $220,000 Niger Recently, the government in Niger incorporated parenting education into its cash transfer program, known as the Niger Safety Nets Project, in selected Scaling Up ECD Training communities. A previous ELP grant financed the development of materials to for Parents Linked to incorporate Early Childhood Development (ECD) content into the program. Cash Transfers The current ELP-supported project is scaling up the approach across the country PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–17 to reach an estimated 2 million disadvantaged people. It includes conducting a quality assessment study during the scale-up, studying and reporting on the GRANT: $170,000 factors that promote ECD in rural Niger and lead to behavior change, and revising the government’s technical guide for parenting training based on the results of the implementation study. Nigeria In five northern states, Nigeria’s Partnership for Education Project, supported by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), is incorporating early childhood care Assessing National ECD and education activities into its package of services. An initial ELP grant was used Needs and Services and to design ECD activities for the project, including $8 million in school grants for Scaling Access to ECD pre-primary activities. The current ELP grant is supporting the design of a tool through School-Based Grants to assess the quality of non-formal ECD services, as well as a strategic framework that the government can use to expand and scale-up ECD activities in the future. PROJECT PERIOD: 2016-18 GRANT: $146,700 Rwanda In Rwanda, to improve ECD among extremely poor families, a pilot known as the Family Strengthening Intervention for Early Childhood Development is Scaling Up Income- embedding a home-visiting program for ECD and parenting into the national Support-Linked ECD income-support program. With the ELP’s support, research is being done Training for Parents to determine the feasibility and cost of scaling up the program using the PROJECT PERIOD: 2015–18 government’s system of community-based child protection workers. GRANT: $150,000 Sri Lanka The ELP is supporting work to strengthen the knowledge base and strategic planning underpinning the government’s newly launched Early Childhood Assessing National Development Project, which provides $50 million in funding for early learning ECD Needs and Services and ECD, with a focus on vulnerable populations. The supported research PROJECT PERIOD: 2015 – 17 is analyzing the challenges that hard-to-reach populations face in accessing ECD services, designing a national strategic plan for the ECD sector and an GRANT: $100,000 implementation plan, aiding in the design of teacher training, and developing assessment tools. Tanzania To strengthen the National Early Childhood Education System, the ELP is supporting a national survey of the pre-primary teacher workforce, a national Strengthening the study of early learning outcomes and the quality of the learning environment. National Early Childhood It is also supporting a cost analysis of early learning resource requirements and Education System the development of a costed ECE implementation plan. ELP funds are also PROJECT PERIOD: 2016-2018 supporting the country’s multi-stakeholder ECD working group. GRANT: $220,000