In recent decades, Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have improved school enrollment substantially. While children are performing better on numeracy than literacy in primary school, PI Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) results show children are falling behind as they progress.
... See More + From 2009 to 2012, the World Bank, with funding from the education for all - fast track initiative (EFA-FTI) and the Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, conducted a number of analytical pieces in the Pacific to better understand the factors impacting on poor learning outcomes of students. These included: early grade reading assessments (EGRAs) in Tonga, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea to identify weaknesses in student reading and possible contributing factors; assessments of the policy and enabling environment for early childhood development activities using the systems approach for better education results (SABER) tools; and community dialogs to better understand perceptions around school readiness and early learning. The implementation of the Pacific early age readiness and learning (PEARL) program has generated significant data, evidence, operational experience, and knowledge. This document aims to draw on the experiences of design and implementation of PEARL activities in order to provide guidance to practitioners who plan to adopt or implement similar activities in other countries, particularly in the Pacific and similar contexts. In addition to implementation details, the document includes information about the outcomes of the activities, justification for choosing the activities, and lessons learned. The document is divided into four chapters: chapter one provides arguments, particularly to funding agencies, on the benefits of investing in school readiness and early literacy. Chapters two and three provide more detail on the theory and evidence base for the selection of school readiness and early literacy interventions under PEARL. Chapter four provides information on key elements to be taken into consideration when moving from pilot to scale with the aforementioned interventions.
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In recent decades, Pacific Island Countries (PICs) have improved school enrollment substantially. While children are performing better on numeracy than literacy in primary school, PI Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (PILNA) results show children are falling behind as they progress.
... See More + From 2009 to 2012, the World Bank, with funding from the education for all - fast track initiative (EFA-FTI) and the Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, conducted a number of analytical pieces in the Pacific to better understand the factors impacting on poor learning outcomes of students. These included: early grade reading assessments (EGRAs) in Tonga, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea to identify weaknesses in student reading and possible contributing factors; assessments of the policy and enabling environment for early childhood development activities using the systems approach for better education results (SABER) tools; and community dialogs to better understand perceptions around school readiness and early learning. The implementation of the Pacific early age readiness and learning (PEARL) program has generated significant data, evidence, operational experience, and knowledge. This document aims to draw on the experiences of design and implementation of PEARL activities in order to provide guidance to practitioners who plan to adopt or implement similar activities in other countries, particularly in the Pacific and similar contexts. In addition to implementation details, the document includes information about the outcomes of the activities, justification for choosing the activities, and lessons learned. The document is divided into four chapters: chapter one provides arguments, particularly to funding agencies, on the benefits of investing in school readiness and early literacy. Chapters two and three provide more detail on the theory and evidence base for the selection of school readiness and early literacy interventions under PEARL. Chapter four provides information on key elements to be taken into consideration when moving from pilot to scale with the aforementioned interventions.
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The Pacific early age readiness and learning (PEARL) program aims to support Pacific Island countries and their development partners in building capacity to design, implement, and monitor evidence-based integrated policies and programs that prepare children and their families for primary school.
... See More + PEARL’s two focus areas are reflected in its two visions: (1) that all children in the Pacific have access to and benefit from programs in their communities that promote healthy, stimulating, and culturally relevant experiences that prepare them for pre-primary, primary schooling, and life; and (2) all classrooms in the early grades of primary education are equipped with the knowledge and the resources to ensure children become literate in a language they are familiar with, and that they are able to use these skills and knowledge to engage in lifelong learning. This report provides a comprehensive picture of the current status of children’s early development in Samoa, the environments in which children in Samoa are growing up, and how these environments are having an impact on children’s early developmental outcomes. Results produced some expected findings reflecting international evidence, as well as some surprising ones, providing the country with a valuable evidence base on which policy makers and service providers can base their planning around, and policy monitoring and program evaluation can be measured against.
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Kiribati is among the first few countries in the world to have undertaken a national census of children’s early health and development. This report presents data collected for 7,194 children aged 3 to 5 years across 21 of the country’s islands.
... See More + Data were collected on children’s health and development, their learning environments at home, and their early childhood education experience, which together, provide a snapshot of how children in Kiribati are developing in their early years and highlights factors that are playing an important role in influencing children’s outcomes. Overall, these results provide the country with valuable evidence to guide policy makers and service providers in their program planning and design, evaluation of interventions, and monitoring of children’s outcomes. It is hoped that in future, the country will drive repeat census collections, as only with repeat data over time will policy makers, service providers, and communities be able to understand if their work to support children is making a difference.
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This brief presents findings from a census of the early development of Tuvalu’s children, identifies areas of need, and puts forth recommendations to address gaps in service delivery to provide every child in Tuvalu with the best start in life.
... See More + Universal health care and education are essential in supporting a strong and healthy development of Tuvalu’s citizens. Access to quality health care services and the opportunity to participate in quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) provides children with the foundation they need to be ready to learn at school. The Government of Tuvalu has invested heavily in health and education, health care is free for all citizens and education is free for those aged 3-18 years. As such, encouragingly the country exhibits few disparities in access to health and education services, including that for children. For example, boys and girls have equitable access to pre-primary education, and policy mandates that ECCE centers cater to the needs of children with special needs. The Pacific Early Age Readiness and Learning (PEARL) program funding by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), implementing by the World Bank, provides technical assistance and analytical work to improve the participating country’s evidence-base on school readiness and early grade literacy to inform short and medium-term policy agendas, including baseline survey on school readiness and early grade reading levels and piloting interventions. Herein, this brief presents data regarding the status of children’s early health and development, as well as their participation in preschool and their learning environments at home. At a country level, this evidence will help to inform intervention strategies and policy planning in early childhood to strengthen the ECCE system with the goal of ensuring thatall children in Tuvalu reach their developmental potential.
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This report presents baseline data from 7,520 children in 7,355 households, across five provinces, 14 districts and 376 villages in northern Lao PDR.
... See More + These results are the starting point for the impact evaluation of the Early Childhood Education (ECE) Project which seeks to support the expansion of quality ECE services in order to improve the overall development and school readiness of children aged three to five years in disadvantaged communities across Lao PDR. The data provides a comprehensive picture of the current status of children’s health and development, of the social, demographic and economic contexts in which children in northern Lao PDR are growing up, and of how all these factors are having an impact on children’s early developmental outcomes. Overall, children in northern Lao PDR are developing poorly, with disparities in child development across different ethnic groups and family backgrounds. Limited parental knowledge of what is required for optimal child health, coupled with inadequate coverage of healthcare services is leading to poor health outcomes for children in northern Lao PDR. Finally, children are receiving very low levels of stimulation and support for their development in their home environments, and this is having a significant negative impact on their learning and development.
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This is the fourth in a series of snapshot reports presenting results from a large-scale early childhood education (ECE) study conducted in the northern provinces of Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR).
... See More + The ECE study was initiated to evaluate the Early Childhood Education Project. The results presented here represent data collected on the availability of, and community access to, services and facilities, and how these relate to early child development, prior to the implementation of the project. Data will be collected again after the project has finished to see if the project has improved outcomes for children. This snapshot highlights that while the coverage of and access to early education services are not sufficient, where they are available these services are related to better levels of early child development.
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This snapshot summarizes preliminary findings related to child development from the early childhood education (ECE) study in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR).
... See More + The ECE study was initiated to evaluate the ECE Project. The results presented here represent data collected on the status of child development prior to the implementation of the project. Data will be collected again after the project has finished to see if the project has improved outcomes for children. This snapshot highlights that children in Northern Lao PDR are developing poorly, with disparities in child development across different ethnic groups and family backgrounds. In particular, Lao-Tai children are developing better than Khmun and Hmong children, and children of parents with some education are doing better than children of parents with no education. Results also reflect very low rates of parent-child interaction and opportunities for children to learn, and this appears to be having a negative impact on child development.
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