Harnessing the power of global data to support young children's learning and development: Analyses, dissemination and implementation

2017年《柳叶刀》系列文章《推进幼儿发展：从科学到规模》估计，中低收入国家中有43%的5岁以下儿童（2.5亿儿童）面临着无法发挥潜力的风险，因为他们的线性成长受到阻碍或生活在极端贫困中。如果考虑到其他风险因素，特别是母亲受教育程度低和儿童受到虐待，处于危险中的儿童比例明显增加。生活在贫困和缺乏刺激的环境中会影响幼儿的学习和发展。处于贫困和逆境中的儿童比没有处于这些压力下的儿童探索和学习得少；他们在学校学得更少，成绩也更差；成年后挣得更少；有更多的社会问题，身体和心理健康状况较差。我们将研究低收入和中等收入国家欧洲经委会方案在家庭和社区中学习的障碍和促进因素，以及早期学习与儿童发展指标和学校表现之间的联系。我们将评估它们对教育和成年后收入的长期影响。我们将对通过代表性国家调查和研究收集的二手数据进行描述性和统计分析。作为一个由多学科和多国专家和合作者组成的成熟团队，我们在91个中低收入国家成功采购和分析数据的基础上，将早期教育纳入其中，并将业务扩展到137个国家。全球数据沿着早期连续体呈现，打破了幼儿发展与欧洲经委会之间、照料与教育之间、在家学习与正规方案学习之间的错误二分法，并支持在生命历程的不同阶段采取多部门行动。我们将通过研究性别、地点和财富、为幼儿提供的服务和家庭支持，以及为家庭和儿童创造便利环境的政策，扩大对幼儿发展威胁的全球分析。我们将首次将欧洲经委会的结构质量指标（如师生比例）与中低收入国家的背景和儿童成果联系起来。目前还没有全球数据的过程质量（例如教师和照料者与儿童之间的相互作用）将通过在世界五个区域中的五个国家各一个国家进行的案例研究进行研究。我们将收集政府、发展援助和家庭在学前教育方面的支出数据；进一步提取关于幼儿发展和学习环境的国家微观数据；将有关幼儿、服务和政策的具有全国代表性的数据更新到可获得的最新调查日期，并制定关于幼儿学习和发展障碍和加速因素的新综合指标。通过与欧洲经委会-欧洲经委会政府和利益攸关方团队的区域网络建立伙伴关系，该项目将帮助建立欧洲经委会-欧洲经委会的研究能力，并在20个国家增加对决策、行动和监测数据的使用。我们将利用调查结果提供基于证据的支持，推动国际人权法，特别是受教育权和儿童权利，推动实现到2030年普及教育的可持续发展目标。这项研究将解决儿童早期发展和欧洲经委会统一方法的证据基础上的差距。研究结果将为指导早期发展和教育干预提供整体方法，从而支持受教育权的发展。它将展示跨学科工作在数据分析和法律研究方面的优势，为转化为政策和监管变革奠定坚实的基础。鉴于欧洲经委会-欧洲经委会在短期、中期和长期学习和福祉方面的关键作用的证据，该项目对发展援助委员会名单上的国家的发展和福利具有重要影响。这种大规模的全球方法对于支持和指导政策和投资至关重要。

The 2017 Lancet Series, Advancing Early Childhood Development: From Science to Scale, estimated that 43% of children under 5 years in LMICs (250m children), were at risk of not reaching their potential because they had stunted linear growth or lived in extreme poverty. The proportion of children at risk increases appreciably when additional risk factors are considered, especially low maternal schooling and child maltreatment. Living in poor and unstimulating conditions affects young children's learning and development. Children exposed to poverty and adversity explore and learn less than children not exposed to these stresses; they learn less at school and achieve fewer school grades; earn less as adults; have more social problems, and poorer physical and mental health. We will study barriers and accelerators to learning in LMIC ECE programmes, at home and in communities, as well as associations between early learning and indicators of child development and school performance. We will estimate their longer-term effects on education and earnings in adulthood. We will use descriptive and statistical analyses of secondary data collected through representative country surveys and research studies. As an established group of multi-disciplinary and multi-country experts and collaborators, we build on prior success in sourcing and analysing data from 91 LMICs by including early education and expanding to 137 countries. Global data, presented along the continuum of the early years, breaks down the false dichotomy between ECD and ECE, between care and education, and between learning at home and in formal programmes, and supports multi-sectoral actions along different stages of the life-course. We will expand our global analyses of threats to ECD by examining gender, location and wealth, services and family supports for young children, and policies that create facilitating environments for families and children. We will, for the first time, link indicators of the structural quality of ECE (eg teacher-child ratios) to contexts and child outcomes in LMICs. Process quality (eg teacher- and caregiver-child interactions), on which there is as yet no global data, will be studied through case studies in 5 countries, one in each of five regions of the world. We will source data on government, development assistance and household expenditures on pre-primary education; extract further country micro-data on contexts in which young children develop and learn; update nationally representative data on young children, services and policies to the most recent survey dates available, and develop new composite indicators of barriers and accelerators of young children's learning and development. Through partnerships with regional networks of ECD-ECE government and stakeholder teams, the project will help to build research capacity in ECD-ECE, and increase the use of data for decision-making, action and monitoring in 20 countries. We will use the results to provide evidence-based support to engage international human rights law, especially the right to education and the rights of the child, in advancing progress towards achieving the SDG goals of universal access by 2030. This research will address the gap in the evidence base for a unified approach to ECD and ECE. The findings will support the development of the right to education by providing a holistic approach to guide early development and educational interventions. It will demonstrate the strength of interdisciplinary work in cross-fertilizing data analysis and legal research in building strong foundations for translation into policy and regulatory change. Given the evidence on the critical roles of ECD-ECE on learning and wellbeing in the short, medium and longer term, the project has important implications for development and welfare in countries on the DAC list. This large-scale global approach is critical to support and guide policy and investments.