eHCI In Action

Tonga

The Pacific Early Age Readiness and Learning (PEARL) Programme, implemented by the World Bank, aims to support Pacific Island countries in building capacity to design, implement, and monitor evidence-based policies and programs that prepare children and their families for primary school. Recognising that to achieve the greatest education impacts it is important to start early, a census of all 3-5 year olds in the country was conducted in 2014/15 using the eHCI (N=6,604), providing a snapshot of children’s early health and development outcomes. The eHCI results were disseminated to all communities across the country through a series of public meetings, provoking discussions that led to the development of a community-based intervention aimed at encouraging caregivers to play and interact with their children to improve school readiness. Implementation of the programme is now complete, and the eHCI was used again to conduct another census of children’s development in 2017 (N=5,785). Results will be used to determine the effectiveness of the programme in improving children’s school readiness, and will help to inform future policy and program decisions regarding early childhood development in Tonga.

Further information about the Pearl Programme can be found here.

Samoa

The Pacific Early Age Readiness and Learning (PEARL) Programme, implemented by the World Bank, aims to support Pacific Island countries in building capacity to design, implement, and monitor evidence-based policies and programs that prepare children and their families for primary school. Before implementation of the PEARL Program, data regarding children’s early development and learning outcomes in Samoa, and indeed across the Pacific, were scarce to non-existent. As such, Samoa PEARL is working to strengthen the regional evidence-base to better inform policy decision, and program development, implementation and monitoring, with the ultimate goal of promoting development and positive learning outcomes for all children. Against this background, in 2016 the eHCI was used to conduct a census of the development of all children aged 3-5 across the country (N=12,193). Findings will enable the government to identify areas of strength and areas of need, and at a country level, this evidence will help strengthen the ECE system to better support positive early child development for all across the country.

Report to be published.

Lao PDR

Funded by World Bank Group, the Early Childhood Education (ECE) Project in Lao PDR seeks to support the expansion of quality ECE services in order to improve the overall development and school readiness of children aged 3-5 years in disadvantaged communities across the country. To evaluate the project’s impact on children and communities, a randomised control trial has been employed. The eHCI was used to collect baseline information on children’s development in 2015/16, capturing information on 7,520 children in 7,355 households, across 5 provinces, 14 districts and 376 villages in northern 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. In 2019/20, endline data will be collected in order to re-assess how well children in target villages have developed in comparison to children in villages without the ECE project interventions. Learnings from the impact evaluation will help inform future ECE policy and program decisions, so that resources are used effectively and have the maximum positive impact on children’s outcomes in Lao PDR.

Further information about the ECE Project can be found here.

Tuvalu

The Pacific Early Age Readiness and Learning (PEARL) Programme, implemented by the World Bank, aims to support Pacific Island countries in building capacity to design, implement, and monitor evidence-based policies and programs that prepare children and their families for primary school. As in Samoa, the key goal of the PEARL Programme in Tuvalu was to strengthen the regional evidence-base to better inform policy decision, and program development, implementation and monitoring, with the ultimate goal of promoting development and positive learning outcomes for all children. In 2015 the country utilising the eHCI to conduct a census of all children aged 3-5 in the country (N=551), collecting information regarding children’s health and development status, as well as their experience with preschool and their learning environments at home in order to provide a snapshot of their early years. Along with Tonga, Samoa and Kiribati, Tuvalu is now one of the first countries in the world to have conducted a census of children’s development across its entire population. As not all children in the country attend a single form of early education or health service at any one point in time to act as a system wide data collection point, the census required implementation of an innovative, mixed-method, and cross-sector approach to data collection. This is a pragmatic data collection model that other countries should consider utilising, and Tuvalu, as with the other countries who have done so, is to be commended on this achievement.

Brazil

Monitoring early childhood development at a population level has been an increasing priority in public policy. Researchers and policy makers in Brazil recognised this, as well as the need for an open source, reliable instrument that is quick and simple to use so that information on children’s outcomes could be measured quickly, easily, and inexpensively, at scale. Against this background, the eHCI was adapted for use in Brazil, and a short form of the instrument was also developed for the Brazilian context as part of a large scale, school-based monitoring system. In this way, the eHCI can be used by teachers quickly and easily, to monitor children’s progress across the country.

Kiribati

The Pacific Early Age Readiness and Learning (PEARL) Programme aims to support Pacific Island countries to improve learning outcomes for their children, through building the capacity to design, implement, and monitor evidence-based policies and programs that increase school readiness. Kiribati is one such Pacific country where the PEARL program has been implemented by the World Bank in the hope of improving the educational trajectories of these children. To help facilitate these community level changes, in 2017 the eHCI was used to conduct a census of the development of all children aged 3-5 across the country (N=7,222). These findings will enable the government to identify areas of strength and areas of need, and at a country level, this evidence will help strengthen the ECE system to better support positive early child development for all across the country.

China

It is well understood that the early years have a great influence on children’s later development, and indeed into adolescence and adulthood. Led by the China Development Research Fund (CDRF), the eHCI has been adapted for use in China and has been implemented in a number of districts and counties across the country, in both urban centres and rural communities, in order to better understand, monitor, and work to improve children’s early development. To date, the eHCI has been used to collect data on more than 200,000 children aged 3-5 years, and will continue to be used to monitor the country’s progress over time. For example, in Shanghai the eHCI is used annually to monitor children’s development as they progress through preschool. Data on children aged 3-5 is collected annually, with results mapped by district and disseminated widely.