Good practices for inclusive early childhood education and care

Places to Grow’s latest online peer-learning event focused on the latest Places to Grow publication, Compendium of Inspiring Practices. If you have missed it, you can rewatch the event here.

The compendium highlights over a dozen ECEC programmes being run by remarkable organisations in Central Europe with the purpose of providing inspiring ideas for early childhood education and care (ECEC)* practitioners, donors, and policymakers to develop more inclusive and high-quality programmes and policies.

You can read — and download this multi-lingual publication (available in English, Hungarian, Slovak — and soon also in Czech) here.

The event provided an exceptional opportunity to get acquainted with the methodology, process and main takeaways of the publication through its authors, International Child Development Initiatives (ICDI) and Schola Empirica.

Enid McLean of ICDI outlined the methodology of the publication: the process started with the question “What is an inclusive programme?”. This led the working group to create the framework which you can now find in the compendium: it relies on programme criteria such as accessibility in terms of location, safe and inclusive environment, and intervention quality.

After mapping these, ICDI reached out to the Places to Grow umbrella partners for a better overview of the programme landscape of the three countries, the Carpathian Foundation in Hungary and Slovakia, and the Open Society Foundation in Czechia.

Among the challenges were, deciding on the target and main purpose of the publication, and finding a diverse set of programmes that target different marginalised groups. It was also debated whether to call it the compendium of best practices or inspiring practices.

“Some of the programmes lack sustainability in the long term, but we wanted to include them because part of the purpose of this compendium is to draw attention to programmes that are really inspiring but may need more funding to continue.”

Enid McLean, ICDI

It is considered to be a great success that the compendium has first-hand knowledge about ECD and ECC in all three countries, including the associated country contexts. It also features small and local initiatives that might not get as much attention otherwise. The interviews were always conducted in the local language — and the final compendium is also available in several languages, making it accessible.

There is also a clear call in the conclusion section for policy improvements in six areas which can be used for advocacy efforts. Finally, the case studies were informed directly by implementing partners to ensure that the authors were getting the most reliable information.

Marek Pour delivered some research insights that Schola Empirica, which consists of a team of researchers, gathered as they collected these case studies and analysed them.

He highlighted the verification of ECC significantly contributing to the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children — and the recognition of measurable impacts on both individuals and communities. These programmes work especially well for families and children who find themselves in any adversities or low socioeconomic resource settings.

Based on scientific literature, Pour highlighted findings such as multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary solutions work best for children and families — and pinpointed limitations in resources such as a not low enough teacher-student ratio.

Concerning measurement, Schola Empirica found that it is important to recognise the role of measuring outcomes and working with data: this is still not a common practice on a regional level.

“I believe that if you measure and evaluate your programmes, you can really tell if it works, and in what ways it can be developed and adapted. It is a very useful part of [any] initiative that I think we are still [often] missing.”

Marek Pour, Schola Empirica

As usual for the format of Places to Grow peer-learning events, the presentations were followed by a Q&A session and breakout rooms where participants could choose a sub-topic to delve into deeper.

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** For the purposes of the compendium we are using the term ECEC to cover both formal and non-formal initiatives for young children, ages 0 to 7, like preschools, childcare centres as well as programmes providing parent support groups, parent and toddler groups and home visits.*