FOCUS AREA: EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT




WHEN
CHILDREN
PLAY,
THEY
LEARN
   Investing in the early years is one of the smartest things a
   country can do for equity and long-term prosperity.


   WHY IT MATTERS                                               OUR APPROACH
   Early childhood experiences have a profound impact on        High-quality programs that help children learn through
   brain development, affecting learning, health, behavior,     play are needed to prepare them to succeed. The World
   and ultimately, lifetime opportunities. Yet millions of      Bank works with governments and partners to develop
   young children are not reaching their full potential due     and implement policies and programs that expand
   to a lack of nurturing care and support, which include       access to quality early childhood education and meet
   adequate nutrition and health, early stimulation, and        the developmental needs of all children. Our strategy
   protection from stress. The right investments in the         takes a coordinated approach that recognizes the
   physical, cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional        special challenges of poverty, gender exclusion, conflict,
   development of young children —from before birth             and disability. Gaps in cognitive and social-emotional
   through their transition to primary school—are critical to   development in children’s early years, before they start
   put children on the path to success in school and beyond.    school, can limit children’s ability to take advantage
                                                                of primary school and realize their full potential. Our
                                                                approach is designed to create the enabling environments
                                                                that nurture skills for success in school and in life.
We leverage experts in education, nutrition, health, and social
protection to build an evidence base, so that countries can craft
programs that fit their needs and are also cost-effective.


OUR PRIORITIES:
1 Access to quality early learning services and                    3 Metrics on early learning outcomes and service
programs                                                           quality
We support countries in achieving their ambitious goals            We are creating a core set of globally comparable metrics
of increasing access to early learning opportunities, while        that countries will be able to collect in their regular
also ensuring quality. Our efforts include improving early         national household surveys to better understand and
education through better curricula and benchmarks                  track children’s development trajectories. The measures
for success, and strengthening parental engagement in              will generate critical data on children’s cognitive and
children’s development. We are developing an evidence-             social-emotional development, and on the quality of pre-
based roadmap of the cognitive and social-emotional                primary learning environments.
skills formed in the early years and how children acquire
them; identifying curricula that foster these pre-academic         4 Promotion of early childhood development in
competencies; and establishing benchmarks for quality              conflict-affected and fragile areas
early childhood education systems, including minimum               Toxic stress in the early years can weaken and damage
standards for instructors, professional development, and           children’s brain architecture and social-emotional
facilities.                                                        development, with lifelong repercussions for learning
                                                                   and health. Given the increasing number of children
2 Cost-effective approaches to deliver early                       growing up in fragile and conflict-affected areas, including
learning interventions                                             as refugees, we are working to identify promising
We are working with development partners and experts               approaches for the delivery of cost-effective early
to identity good practices on early childhood education,           childhood education programs that can protect and
factoring in feasibility and affordability. This includes          nurture the development of these children, despite the
strategic engagement with the non-state sector.                    harsh conditions in which they live.




       educationgp@worldbank.org    worldbank.org/education    @WBG_Education Human Capital Project #INVESTinPeople