Early childhood care and education: moving from why to how
The Asia Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood conference brought together participants to advocate for and plan a multisectoral approach in early childhood through education.
June 21, 2018 by Christen Maguire, Global Partnership for Education
|
6 minutes read
A school boy writes on his notebook at school. Nepal. Credit: Global Action Nepal
A school boy writes on his notebook at school. Nepal.
Credit: Global Action Nepal

From June 5 to 7, I and around 700 advocates and experts on early childhood gathered in Kathmandu for the Asia Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood (ARNEC) conference, hosted by the government of Nepal.

ARNEC is a regional network working to build strong partnerships across sectors, agencies, and institutions to improve early childhood. This year the conference theme was: “Towards achieving the SDGs: what is a successful multisectoral approach to ECD?”, and convened actors from various sectors, such as education, health, and planning.

In parallel to the conference, a policy forum was taking place, led by UNESCO and co-organized with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) of Nepal, UNICEF and ARNEC.

Addressing the needs of young children from different angles

Over three days policymakers, practitioners, and academics came together to advocate for and plan a multisectoral approach in early childhood through education, health and nutrition, responsive care-giving, early learning, and safety and security.  

Successful early childhood interventions require inputs and collaboration across these different areas. One of the key challenges is figuring out how to coordinate the multiplicity of actors and who has primary responsibility for providing the different services to young children.

Many of the keynote speakers highlighted the progress that has been made in ECD over the past decade. Most notably the shift in conversation from why early childhood is important to how successful implementation and practice take place.

There is no longer a need to convince policymakers that early childhood is important. Now the conversation needs to focus on what successful practice looks like and how it can be achieved.

Dr. Pia Britto (UNICEF, Chief and Senior Advisor, Early Childhood Development) emphasized this point in her speech: “The case on why ECD is important has never been clearer.  We need to move from ‘basecamp’ to higher elevations of ‘how’- especially in achieving outcomes and delivery through political commitment.” 

Through the successful case studies of Nepal, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, China, Cambodia, and The Philippines participants walked away with a better understanding of why the focus needs to be on how to implement successful ECD programs and also with examples of successful implementation.  

Nepal presented their progress, and their experience demonstrated the importance of involving the planning commission to coordinate a strong, multisectoral early childhood strategy.  The strategy needed to include input from multiple ministries and the planning commission helped coordinate their plans, set goals and align work across various ministries and create a costed action plan.

Giving policymakers the tools to move from policy to action

To help achieve the goal of moving from why to how, a 2-day policy forum led by UNESCO simultaneously for ministry representatives, focused on shifting from policy to action.  The forum brought together around 30 government representatives from the region to discuss progress, showcase multi-sectoral approaches, goals, and actions moving forward.

The forum provided ministry representatives with a space where they could hear about ECD programs throughout the region and learn about the different steps to successful implementation.

Representatives also had the chance to discuss challenges they face in their respective contexts, and brainstorm ways to overcome these challenges. By the end of the forum representatives walked away with action steps and goals for the next year.  This included a focus and commitment towards increased enrollment rates for better access, collecting data to support the monitoring of Sustainable Development Goal 4.2, and implementation of a multi-sectoral approach to early childhood development.

GPE supports early learning

Events such as the ARNEC conference and the UNESCO-led policy forum as essential to building best practice and regional engagement.  They provide a space that enhances regional collaboration and motivation for early childhood development.

This is something GPE supports fully and will continue to support through its knowledge and innovation exchange (KIX) mechanism, which includes a thematic focus on early childhood education.

Corrigendum: a previous version of this blog attributed the organization of the policy forum to ARNEC. In fact, the organization was led by UNESCO, with other co-organizers. The blog has been corrected to reflect this.

Related blogs

Comments

Hi Christen, i am partha pratim ray, communications manager, United Way Delhi. Since last year our organisatiin is deeply involved in providing
ECD interventions in Govt schools within New Delhi city limits. I liked the way you have written about ECD in the context of the international forum. Would like to be in touch with you for the purpose of knowledge sharing.
Looking forward to hear from you.
Regards,
Partha Ray

My name is Luis O. Aguilar. Ia m the director of The Paz Foundation (www.thepazfoundation.org). I am interested in learning about your education programs for children. We are starting education programs in two countries and I would like to learn about your children education programs.
L. Aguilar

Dear Christene Maguire,
I m Victorien uwamungu, from Rwanda, working with the Ministry of Education as Inspector of Education with a focus on ECCE-ECD. After reading your article on Nepal conferance, I m inspired to read from you and would like to benefit from your rich experience in domain as well as sharing with you the progress we made here in Rwanda in recent years of implementation of ECCE-ECD, since this is still a new sector in our education system.
Hope to receiving feedback from you Christen.
Regards.

Victorien UWAMUNGU

email: vshyaka94@gmail.com

In reply to by UWAMUNGU VICTORIEN

Hi Victorien,
Thank you for your comment. It would be great to hear more about your work and the progress Rwanda has made in the sector of ECCE-ECD. I'll be in touch over email.
-Christen

Iam ECD practitioner using the methodology of learning through in Uganda and glad to hear more insight in early childhood good sector

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Plain text

  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.