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

2017年《柳叶刀》系列报告《促进早期儿童发展：从科学到规模》估计，LMIC中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，因为他们发育迟缓或生活在极端贫困中。如果考虑到其他风险因素，特别是产妇受教育程度低和虐待儿童的情况，处于危险境地的儿童的比例会显著增加。生活在恶劣和没有刺激性的条件下，会影响幼儿的学习和发展。与没有受到这些压力的儿童相比，处于贫困和逆境中的儿童探索和学习更少；他们在学校学到的东西更少，成绩更低；成年后收入更少；社会问题更多，身心健康更差。我们将研究LMIC欧洲经委会方案在家庭和社区学习方面的障碍和促进因素，以及早期学习与儿童发展指标和学校表现之间的联系。我们将评估他们对成年后的教育和收入的长期影响。我们将对通过具有代表性的国别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既定小组，我们通过纳入早期教育并扩大到137个国家，在从91个小岛屿发展中国家获取和分析数据方面取得了先前的成功。全球数据按照早年的连贯性列报，打破了幼儿发展与欧洲经委会之间、照料与教育之间、在家中学习与在正规方案中学习之间的错误二分法，并支持在生命过程的不同阶段采取多部门行动。我们将通过审查性别、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，扩大我们对幼儿发展威胁的全球分析。我们将首次将幼儿教育结构质量指标(例如教师与儿童的比率)与低收入中等收入国家的情况和儿童成果联系起来。过程质量(如教师与照顾者和儿童之间的互动)目前尚无全球数据，将通过5个国家的案例研究进行研究，世界五个地区各一个。我们将收集关于政府、发展援助和家庭学前教育支出的数据；进一步提取关于幼儿发展和学习环境的国家微观数据；将具有全国代表性的幼儿、服务和政策数据更新到现有的最新调查日期，并制定新的幼儿学习和发展障碍和加速器综合指标。通过与欧洲经委会政府和利益攸关方小组的区域网络建立伙伴关系，该项目将帮助建设欧洲经委会的研究能力，并在20个国家更多地利用数据进行决策、行动和监测。我们将利用这些成果提供循证支持，使国际人权法，特别是受教育权和儿童权利，推动在实现可持续发展目标方面取得进展，即到2030年普及服务。这项研究将解决对幼儿发展和欧洲经委会采取统一办法的证据基础方面的差距。调查结果将通过提供一种指导早期发展和教育干预的综合办法来支持教育权的发展。它将展示跨学科工作在交叉化肥数据分析和法律研究方面的力量，为将其转化为政策和法规变化奠定坚实的基础。鉴于有证据表明幼儿发展--欧洲经委会在短期、中期和长期对学习和福祉的关键作用，该项目对发援会名单上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.