Early childhood care and education: an international evidence note

The policy and evidence context for early childhood care and education has been materially shaped by the 2007 Education for All monitoring focus on early childhood. For the analysis, the value of the present data lies in the questions it can answer reliably and in the limits it makes visible.

Analytical scope

For early childhood care and education, the 2007 Education for All monitoring focus on early childhood provides the contemporaneous context. It does not, without setting-specific evidence, demonstrate the operation of early childhood care and education. Decision-makers should state which matters are evidenced, which express policy and which require authorised judgement.

The 2007 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Strong Foundations, focuses on the issue. It treats early childhood provision as extending beyond access to pre-primary places and considers health, nutrition, care, protection and learning together. The report’s framing requires quality analysis to examine who participates, the suitability of provision for young children, workforce capacity and unequal access.

Definitions and data coverage

For the available evidence, provision for young children should integrate learning, wellbeing, protection and development, with expectations appropriate to age and context. When examining early childhood care and education, review should cover the stages at which learners receive information, provision, assessment, support and remedy.

Review of the measure should be based on a stated method rather than general assurance. For comparative analysis, comparison requires more than the use of a common label. When examining early childhood care and education, definitions, reference periods, population coverage, institutional boundaries and collection practices must be sufficiently aligned for the observed difference to have a stable meaning. Those required to act should be able to understand the method and its material limitations.

• Is the remaining difference educationally material?
• Has a classification changed?
• Are the populations defined on the same basis?
• Do the reference periods align?
• Are exclusions and missing records comparable?

Use of the findings

In work concerning early childhood care and education, the applicable expectation should be capable of consistent application. Reported averages should be accompanied by sufficient distributional information to identify material differences between learner groups, locations and forms of provision. Terms governing eligibility, support, assessment, reporting or review should prevent materially different treatment without recorded justification.

The principal risks in relation to the available evidence are unsafe ratios or environments, weak transition between home and school, unequal access to trained staff, and measurement that narrows developmental aims. Separate treatment would overlook how a failed control may prevent detection or operation of another safeguard.

Uncertainty and safeguards

Assurance of early childhood care and education should draw on more than one form of evidence. Useful records include programme aims appropriate to child development, family communication and participation, transition and referral arrangements, staff competence and supervision, and safe environment and safeguarding records.

Authorities and providers reviewing the comparison should proceed in a defined sequence. The review should prepare a comparability table before analysing results. As regards early childhood care and education, record common elements, material differences, breaks in series and the direction in which each limitation may affect the conclusion; do not rank systems where those limitations remain material.

Decision-makers using evidence on the comparison should be told what the data cannot establish as clearly as what it can. As regards early childhood care and education, the finding should identify its analytical character and the system, institution, programme or learner population to which it applies. The basis for applying the result elsewhere should be established rather than assumed.

Uncertainty and safeguards

Care is required in drawing conclusions about early childhood care and education. The analysis proceeds on the basis that participation rates do not establish the quality of early learning, and narrow academic measures do not provide a complete account of development or wellbeing. The analysis proceeds on the basis that association should not be presented as causation, and statistical significance should not be treated as evidence of educational importance without further analysis. Within the scope under review, material limitations should be stated with the finding presented to decision-makers and affected learners.

For early childhood care and education, decisions concerning the available evidence should remain traceable to the information available for the stated reference period. Changes in condition, evidence, method and interpretation should be recorded separately when a conclusion is revised. Without this distinction, a reporting change may be mistaken for improvement or deterioration in educational practice.

For early childhood care and education, where responsibilities for delivery are shared with partners, suppliers or several public bodies, responsibility should be mapped across the complete service. The division of responsibilities should cover records, communication, escalation and the power to require correction. Protection should operate across the complete service, irrespective of how delivery is divided.

For authorities and providers, the present development requires a clear account of how the comparison is implemented and how its effect is established. In work concerning early childhood care and education, public confidence cannot be separated from an institution's ability to identify responsibility and substantiate its conclusions.