Investing in early education is even more crucial in fragile contexts
There is growing interest in the role of early learning programs in promoting peacebuilding because the foundations of development and learning are laid in the first five years of life. The link between early education and peacebuilding is especially crucial in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, to promote sustained peace and security. Read examples of what GPE is doing to support this link.
August 31, 2017 by Alexandra Solano Rocha, Global Partnership for Education
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8 minutes read
A boy raises his hand in class, Burundi. Credit: UNICEF Burundi/Colfs
A boy raises his hand in class. Burundi.
Credit: UNICEF Burundi/Colfs

GPE 2020, GPE’s strategic plan for 2016 – 2020, commits to improving the quality and availability of early childhood care and education (ECCE) for children ages 3-8, especially for marginalized children and those living in countries affected by conflict and fragility.

There is growing interest in the role of ECCE programs in promoting peacebuilding. The foundations of development and learning are laid in the first five years of life – including behavior traits, the ability to manage conflicts, and cultural norms and identities.

Research demonstrates that children can identify racial cues in adult faces as early as 9 months and can begin forming stereotypes and prejudices around the age of 3 to 4 years.

Consequently, the early years provide an important window of opportunity for establishing pro-social and peace-promoting behaviors and attitudes.

The links between ECCE and peacebuilding are especially crucial in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Children in these contexts face a multitude of risks including: psychosocial difficulties, loss of caregivers and lack of opportunities for early learning, play and positive social interaction.

Salient features of investments in the early years to promote peace

Most early childhood development curriculum cover socio-emotional development and many programs have early reading materials that promote diversity and pro-social development, but promoting peacebuilding and security is also crucial to the long-term vision and policy priorities of fragile and conflict-affected countries.

The salient features of investments to ensure children, parents and teachers receive and provide socio-emotional and peace-promoting learning in well-designed ECCE programs are the following:

1. Include mother tongue and ensure local sensitivity

Research shows that mother tongue education right from the early years increases a child’s success and attendance in school. It can also help to bridge the cultures at home and school, build inclusive societies and foster a respect for cultural and linguistic diversity.

Using mother tongue in the early grades makes parents more likely to communicate with teachers and participate in their children’s learning.

It also increases the chances of girls and rural children with less exposure to a dominant language to stay in school longer and repeat grades less often.

When the curriculum is delivered in a medium with which learners are familiar and through which they can receive support from their parents and caregivers, the potential to achieve learning outcomes increases.

In Eritrea for example, the Ministry of Education is determined to ensure that all children in the country receive their elementary education in their mother tongue. The ministry is engaged in sustained efforts to train teachers, conduct refresher courses, and develop instructional materials for mother tongue education, especially through a nomadic education program.

It is important to mention though that while mother tongue instruction and materials are preferred over second or third languages for the first grades, there are practicality issues and nuances in cases where there are many prominent languages. 

In these cases, pedagogy can be developed to supports a child’s language transition (i.e. first mastering basic oral vocabulary before moving to traditional literacy instruction) when full mother tongue is not possible.

2. Work with communities and hire locally

Using early learning materials in local languages requires having teachers who are fluent with the local languages. This stresses the importance of hiring local teachers, which also brings benefits of greater communication and accountability between the teacher and the community.

Working with the community to produce and deliver early learning materials and train on their proper use was a common theme in Uganda and South Sudan.

In South Sudan, the community was used as an entry point to reach an integrated approach on the learning/teaching environment, and as a way to integrate key issues such as education for peace, emergency preparedness and basic life skills in children in the lower grades of primary.  The GPE grant provides support to school development committees to train their key members in rights and protection of children, duties of parents, conducts of teachers, and basic principles of child-friendly schools. Teachers in these schools receive continuous training and count with parent-teacher associations.

3. Reach disadvantaged/conflict-affected areas

The third key investment that contributes to peacemaking in fragile and conflict-affected contexts is reaching disadvantaged and conflict-affected areas.

In Mongolia, a GPE grant, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, the World Bank and UNICEF, supported the development and implementation of mobile kindergartens housed in yurts that travel with nomadic families each summer and were equipped with furniture, teaching materials and toys. This approach provided access to preschool for more than 3,700 nomadic children who might not otherwise have had access to ECCE.

In Nigeria, children in the northern states have little or no access to pre-primary education, and insurgent activities and attacks on schools are a direct threat to schooling, especially for girls. In response, GPE is providing technical support and US$7.65 million—in partnership with ministries of education, USAID and the World Bank—to improve teaching and learning materials in pre-primary schools and promote parent and guardian engagement in early childhood development.

GPE will continue to work with partners in all countries, particularly in those affected by fragility and conflict, to reach the most vulnerable children and give them the chance to receive a quality education.

While the link between investing in inclusive quality ECCE programs and promoting peace may not be an obvious one, it is a link that all education partners should not undermine if the goal is to ensure sustained peace and security for nations.

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Comments

Thanks for the interesting blog Alexandra. You make some interesting points, so my question is: Why is less than 1% of education aid spent on pre-school? And do you think this will increase in the future, now that the dividend of investment in this form of education is becoming better understood?

In reply to by Chris Sowton

Dear Chris,
Thanks for your question. It's the million dollar question! And it has many parts to it. One is that perhaps some countries have not really understood the benefits of pre-school. We need to work more on advocacy. Two is that there are competing priorities from governments that may appear to be time-sensitive, so instead in investing on preschool for long term results, governments may decide to invest in other areas that reap more instant benefits. A third one is that unfortunately, some see preschool as a more wealthy commodity, leaving parents to invest in preschool instead of having the government step in and fund themselves. A fourth one is that there have been studies, although not a lot, about how investing in preschool that is not of quality could actually be detrimental to learning. This point leads governments and providers to not want to invest in preschool unless an approach is evidenced to be of high quality, and are then waiting to invest until they are confident that certain approach will work. I do think that, despite these barriers, there are governments and actors that do see the clear benefits, are willing to invest in the long term, see ECCE as a priority, and are willing to learn from other countries' experiences and see what works, and adapt it to their country. There is certainly more hope than before that this form of education is becoming better understood, and that this understanding will lead to more investments.

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